The Marietta journal and courier. (Marietta, Ga.) 1909-1918, 1917-07-27
SWEET POTATO HOUSE
PLANS FURNISHED
FREE BY U. 5.
No Need to Buy High Priced
Plans Offered by Men
Who Sell Plans.

Washington, D. c., July 23.-There
is no mystery about building a salts
factory storage house for sweet po-
tatoes. Southern farmers who are
paying large prices for patented
plans and equipment alleged to pro-
vide the only successful way of stor-
ing sweet potatoes, are being de-
frauded. Specialists of the United
States Department of Agriculture
whose attention recently has been
called to instances in which farmers
have paid as high as $3.50 for sets of
plans, do not hesitate to brand such
activities as plain humbuggery.
Plans of houses that incorporate the
simple principles of storage and COM
mon sense methods of construction,
and which have proved successful by
years Of careful trial, are furnished
free by the Department of Agricul-
ture to any farmer who will ask for
them.
Because reports have been made
and circulated in the South that stor-
age houses recommended by the De-
partment of Agriculture are not sat
isfactOry, it is believed necessary,
now, that the time to provide ade-
quate storage for the coming harvest
is at hand, to correct such state
ments. One man with plans to sell
has said that the shrinkage Of sweet
potatoes stored in houses designed by
the Government specialists is from 16
to 20 per cent, while in houses of
his design there is practically no
shrinkage. The fallacy of such a
claim, Department specialists point
out, lies in the fact that shrinkage is
essential to good keeping of the pota-
toes. Sweet potatoes stored in the
type of house recommended by the
Department shrink from to 10 per
cent in weight, not in bulk, by reason
of evaporation of surplus moisture.
Proper curing of sweet potatoes
means getting rid of surplus mois-
ture, and the type of house which
the specialists suggest accomplishes
this by combining the ordinary prin-
ciples of good ventilation with COM
mon sense methods of construction.
Storage houses built according to
plans suggested by the Departm
Of Agriculture have been in use in
every State of the South for five or
six years. The Department has no
knowledge of failure in any house
built and operated strictly according
to recommendations. Four years of
investigation with one hundred
houses under observation showed
that the average loss by decay, after
an average storage period of 124
days, was less than 2 1-2 per cent. In
determining this loss representatives
OF the Department personally graded
the potatoes in each house-a total
of 228,O00 bushels. Every potato
that had decayed spot was thrown
out and classed as decayed. In each
case the potatoes were harvested,
stored and cared for by farmers. In
the Departments own storage house
at Arlington Va, sweet potatoes
stored in October last year and re-
moved the latter part Of June showed
a loss of less than / per cent.
Farmers intending to build stor-
age houses should write to the De-
partment of Agriculture for Far
mers' Bulletin 548, "Storing and
Marketing Sweet Potatoes" This
bulletin gives plans and lists of ma
terials needed and also tells how to
convert buildings such as abandoned
tenant houses into storage quarters.