Potato Growing in New York. 185 



the land is devoted to potatoes. It is found that direct apphcations 

 of manure aggravate the potato scab, if that trouble be present, but 

 that the difficulty is not so great if the manure has been appHed to 

 the previous crop. It requires, however, a heavy application. to be 

 sufficient for two large tilled crops. In some localities, where the 

 scab is especially troublesome, direct applications of bam manure to 

 potato land have been abandoned and commercial fertilizers em- 

 ployed instead. If the land is to be fall plowed and sown to a cover- 

 crop, the manure, if available, may well be applied at this time — 

 plowing it under if coarse or working it into the surface if fine. The 

 spring plowing wall effect its thorough mixing with the soil. 



Commercial Fertilizers. Commercial fertilizers • are frequently 

 used in New York on land to be planted to potatoes. Potatoes being 

 a cash crop upon which considerable labor is expended and a crop 

 which usually responds to such applications, this practice seems to 

 be rational. This Station, however, has conducted few fertilizer ex- 

 periments and readers are referred to the excellent bulletins on this 

 subject issued by the State Experiment Station at Geneva and also 

 to a popular discussion of the use of fertilizers in potato growing by 

 Mr. Alva Agee in Bulletin No. 105 of the Pennsylvania State Board 

 of Agriculture, Harrisburg, Pa., entitled "Potato Culture." 



Selection of Seed. It is a fact of very general observation among 

 potato growers that varieties possessing strong vigor and powers of 

 large production tend to "run out" under the ordinary system of 

 management. The potato thrives best in a cool climate. In the 

 United States it reaches its highest development in Maine, New 

 York, Michigan and the Northwest. Here degeneration is believed 

 to be less rapid than in territory to the south of this belt, but the 

 tendency exists. Some have thought that it is inherent m the sys- 

 tem of propagating by means of tubers; that the only means of 

 escaping its consequences is by having frequent recourse to new 

 varieties recently developed from the seed. Growers in the more 

 southerly districts believe they find that by securing seed from the 

 North every few years, better crops are produced than from seed of 

 the same variety that has been continuously grown in their own lo- 

 calities. It is believed that this tendency to lose vigor is least 

 marked when the conditions of climate, soil and culture are those 

 best suited to bring the plants to the highest degree of development, 

 and that it increases as these conditions are departed from. 



It is thought that, in New York at least, the "rimning out" of 

 varieties is due in greater measure to the system of seed selection and 

 care in common use (or rather to the lack of such a system) than to 



