290 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The fully ripened tuber on the other hand has already passed the 

 prime of life and is on the decline, as soon as wilted. Its sprouts 

 have not the necessary vitality to give them a proper start in life, any 

 more than have the offspring of aged animals or the buds of a ehruken 

 currant cutting. 



It is a well established fact in animal husbandry that the offspring 

 of animals that have only reached the full flush of maturity are much 

 thriftier than those of animals that have begun to go down the de- 

 cline of life. The same law holds in the propagation of plants of all 

 kinds; propagate from the strong, thrifty and robust, but not from the 

 weakly declining plants that are withered or are approaching old L<ge. 



You never cut your grafts from old or shrunken wood, but from 

 young, vigorous growth. Bear in mind the potato is not a seed, but 

 is a swollen, underground stem, in which are stored up starch, .juices, 

 etc., for the feeding of the young sprout. 



Perhaps you will say, why is not the fully matured tuber better 

 than one half grown ? For certainly it would stand to reason that it 

 would be better supplied with the necessary chemical constituents than 

 the smaller, immature tuber can be. 



I say that, under right conditions, it is. But in order to retain this 

 vigor of full maturity, you must at once, by some process, provide a 

 method of suspending all life action. In other words, you must retard 

 nature's plan. For in that plan, maturity once reached, then comes 

 decay and the wasting away of old age. And with that comes the loss 

 of vigor, and with this loss of vigor comes inability to produce vigor- 

 ous and robust offspring. 



The fully matured potato, if it could be used soon after maturity, or 

 kept from all contact with warm, dry air that would cause it to wilt and 

 deterioate, is as good seed as can be had. But it is a fact that very few 

 growers can, and still less do, give the proper care or have the neces- 

 sary facilities for thus keeping their seed. Their mature seed is, there- 

 fore, wilted, and for that reason a small tuber thajt has not reached full 

 maturity and will not at once commence the downward run to old age 

 and decay, is greatly to be preferred to a mature one that has already 

 begun that decline. 



My observation has repeatedly shown that mature seed stock, 

 which had been so kept as to be in prime condition at planting time, is 

 as good, or better, than second crop or late crop seed. 



Central Wisconsin being too far north to successfully grow two 

 crops of potatoes in a season, we have been experimenting with what 

 we call a late crop. To get this we plant good, sound seed at intervals 

 of a few days, up to as late as July 22. For some reason very early 



