The Potato Blight 



283 



from frost. These are allowed to " sprout " 

 slowly in the spring, and are planted with 

 short sturdy shoots attached to them. This 

 plan is also adopted in many private gardens, 

 especially when there is accommodation in 

 the form of sheds, spare shelves in the fruit 

 room, or under a dry stage of a greenhouse. 

 It is not so easy for farmers who plant 

 extensively to adopt this plan, but it is a 

 question for their consideration whether it 

 would not pay them to give their earnest 

 attention to this subject. The present system 

 of storing seed potatoes in pits is a fatal mis- 

 take, if they are allowed to remain there after 

 the end of January, or early in February, and 

 has been one of the chief causes of the 

 fatalities attending the potato crop. 



I will take, as an instance, the winter and 

 early spring of this year, when the weather 

 was very mild generally, and potatoes grew 

 very early in the pits. In a great number of 

 cases the potatoes had sprouted so much that 

 the sprouts were torn away from the tubers, 

 certainly once, and in some instances more 

 than once. The same thing occurred when 

 large quantities of potatoes were stored in 

 heaps under cover; this sweating and pre- 

 mature formation of sprouts, and their 

 destruction, tending to weaken the constitu- 

 tion of the tuber, and causing the " blind- 

 ness " which we often meet with in fields and 

 gardens. I know of instances when sound 

 potatoes encountered this treatment, and 

 where some of those, sold for seed to 

 amateurs, resulting in from 25 to 40 per 

 cent, of " blindness ; " that is, failure of the 

 tuber to reproduce itself. I maintain that 

 the storage of our seed potatoes is a ques- 

 tion of very great importance ; and, in my 

 opinion, we may trace to the improper 

 storage of seed tubers one of tlie causes why 

 the disease has made so much headway. 

 This has been going on year after year, and 

 is a mistake. 



Growers on an extensive scale may ask — 

 How are we to store seed for a large quan- 

 tity of ground, if we adopt this plan ? I 

 think that difficulty is easily overcome, as 

 several means for effectually storing seed 

 tubers present themselves, such as utilizing 



spare space in out-buildings, or the erection 

 of potato-seed sheds, w'hich can be readily 

 done by using fern, heather, sods, or any 

 available materials for the sides, and thatch- 

 ing the roof with straw, reeds, heath, or any 

 waste material, and putting in here and there 

 an old sash for light and ventilation; of 

 course having doors at the ends also for 

 thorough ventilation. One thing is a cer- 

 tainty : it is as much to our interest to look 

 after our potato crops and prevent disease as 

 it is to expensively house our cattle and 

 prevent disease in them ; and it behoves us 

 to be up and doing, and to set our brains to 

 work on what is best to be done. 



Another primary cause of failure is to be 

 found in the persistency with which, in so many 

 cases, we plant potatoes year after year in 

 the same ground ; in other cases, with only 

 a short interval between the crops of this 

 tuber. We go on year after year manuring 

 for the same purpose, but never supplying 

 the best of all the manures nature has given 

 us — a change of good fresh iinused soil. 

 Farmers have it in their power to do this, 

 and probably do change their potato land 

 frequently. There can be no question about 

 the advisability of deep digging or deep plough- 

 ing for this crop, in dry situations as well 

 as wet, but especially in the latter. It is 

 most desirable that the potato should be 

 reUeved from a superabundance of moisture ; 

 hence the necessity for providing every 

 available means of relieving the ground as 

 speedily as possible from an excess of 

 moisture. I have a strong conviction that 

 unless this is done, the potato, when just 

 about arriving at maturity, is unable to take 

 up such a great amount of moisture at the 

 root, and that rapid root decay sets in. 

 Does this root-decay pass to the tuber, and 

 through the cellular tissues of the haulm to 

 the foliage, where it manifests itself in the 

 spot so familiar to us ? I venture to think 

 so, and that disease springs first from a dis- 

 organization of the roots, arising from too 

 much moisture there at the period I speak 

 of I have founded this impression on 

 observing for years past that the disease does 

 not make headway, only after much wet, 



