380 STATE IIORTICULTUKAT. SOCIETY. 



twig of a tree. We can accept facts about potato culture for what they are 

 worth, and many times they are, if rightly interpreted, valuable guides to 

 future methods of culture; but when men theorize upon the good or bad 

 results of planting small potatoes, drawing their conclusions as if the potato 

 were a veritable seed, they are liable to be in error. 



A nurseryman "who selects a weak stem from which to make cuttings for 

 propagating purposes, would at once be open to severe criticism ; and still this 

 is what the farmer does in planting his small potatoes. The florist who would 

 make cuttings from his plants and allow a large number of buds to grow upon 

 each cutting, would be laughed at by others in his profession ; still this is 

 exactly the method pursued by the grower who plants whole potatoes. 



The potato is a cutting with a good many buds upon it ; and while 

 remembering this and the methods of the most experienced propagators of 

 plants by cuttings, any farmer must draw about the following conclusions: 



1. Well grown potatoes that are best for market must have the most healthy 

 eyes and the most nourishment to support those eyes when they start to grow. 



2. Small potatoes are stems of puny growth, the eyes of which must neces- 

 sarily be weakly developed, and the amount of nourishment stored for the 

 purpose of feeding the newly started buds is very limited for the purpose. 



3. A piece cut I'rom a well developed potato with one or two eyes, must come 

 very near the ideal of a cutting for the propagator of its kind ; it will push a 

 strong shoot which will be an index to the root stalks beneath. The tendency 

 will be to produce few stems (or potatoes), but of good size and healthy growth. 



4. A small potato planted entire is a cutting with weak buds which will pro- 

 duce many spindling stalks, poorly supported in the outset, and so dwarfed 

 that the tendency beneath is to develop a large number of small root stalks 

 slightly thickened ; in other words a large setting of small potatoes. 



Prof. Beal says that the leaves of plants are like the stomach of animals. 

 Taking this view, a hill of potatoes with pnny stalks will hardly sustain a strong 

 growth of its own system beneath the soil. It is probably true that if in pre- 

 paring potatoes for seed we should select the small ones and from each tuber 

 cut all the buds away except the one strongest and best developed, we should 

 get very similar results as from planting pieces of large tubers with one eye or 

 bud. 



C. W. G 



Granville Cowing, of Muncie, Ind., in a recent number of the Indiana 

 Farmer, makes the following good points upon the potato: 



As an article of food for man, it ranks next to the most important cereals. 

 It is impatient of moisture, and in warm weather will be seriously injured or 

 destroyed by submersion for eight or ten hours in running water. Its tubers, 

 if exposed for a considerable time in the sun's rays, become partially poisonous 

 and unfit for food. Paring and soaking such potatoes for a short time in cold 

 water before cooking them will, it is said, remove all traces of the poison and 

 the bitter flavor indicating it. 



The potato crop this season is probably the best ever produced in the State of 

 Indiana. Pains came at such short intervals that the Colorado bug and the 

 blister beetle were able to injure the plants but little, and at the close of the 

 season had almost entirely disappeared. By sprinkling Paris green on thin 

 slices of raw potatoes and placing them next spring where potatoes were grown 

 this season, the Colorado bug may be almost entirely destroyed. 



