SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETING. 217 



There are several ways of obtaining better seed, the simplest 

 of which is to buy from some other grower, who has been 

 selecting his seed, provided that man can be found and is will- 

 ing to sell some of his selected stock. Then again, we may im- 

 prove our own seed, either by mass selection, seed breeding or 

 hill selection. I have tried all three, but think hill selection 

 the most practicable for the average farmer. Mass selection is 

 better than no selection, but we must remember, when we pick 

 out an ideal potato from a pile, that it may have been the only 

 nice potato in that hill, in which case the progeny of that potato 

 is more likely to resemble the average of the hill, than this 

 parent, for the potato seed is not properly a seed but a cutting 

 or a scion of the potato plant. Seed breeding is rather a long 

 process and requires more time and attention than the average 

 farmer can afford. The best way to make hill selections is to 

 dig a hill at a time with a hand digger, throwing two rows 

 together, keeping the rank and file of the potatoes on one row, 

 and whenever a hill is found containing five or six smooth, even 

 sized potatoes, with no small or rough ones, throwing this on 

 the other row, so that they may be picked up separately. It is 

 not a very hard matter in this way to select enough good hills 

 to plant a plot of sufficient size to grow seed enough for the en- 

 tire crop for the following year. If the selections are made 

 carefully, I believe that in a few years a decided improvement, 

 both in yield and quality, may be obtained. Having secured as 

 good seed as possible to plant, it is necessary to exercise special 

 care in cutting, planting, cultivating, spraying, harvesting, stor- 

 ing and shipping the seed crop. 



Clover seed is the ideal ground upon which to plant. In 

 Aroostook the more successful growers practice either a three 

 or four years' system of crop rotation. Following potatoes 

 with oats and seeding down to clover, growing clover either 

 one or two years, plowing in the fall ready for potatoes the 

 next spring, after a thorough harrowing with both the disk and 

 smoothing harrow, we are ready to plant. 



I have treated my seed with the formaldehyde solution for 

 the past two years and believe it pays. Not that the black-leg 

 disease has ever done much damage in Aroostook, but seed 

 showing a very small per cent of disease here may develop as 

 much as fifty per cent when planted in the South, and it is for 



