More Potatoes 



349 



Zavitz, of the Ontario Experiment 

 Station, selected the best hills of seven 

 varieties of potatoes for a period of 

 sixteen years. During the first four- 

 year period their average yield was 120 

 bushels. During the three succeeding 

 periods of four }^ears each, as a result of 

 selection, the average yields were in- 

 creased to 216, 218 and 249 bushels. 

 Within the sixteen-year period, the 

 methods of culture were kept practically 

 the same and the result is, therefore, 

 to be attributed to selection. 



But when single high-producing hills 

 are saved for the next year's planting, 

 one should make sure that they did 

 not come from some highly fertilized or 

 particularly favorable part of the field. 

 Preferably they should be chosen from 

 the poorer parts where their production 

 has been high in spite of a bad environ- 

 ment. This will show that they really 

 have good heredity: and it is potatoes 

 of good heredity that must be depended 

 on to put money in the grower's pocket. 



For further details, the grower must 

 consult Dr. Gilbert's book. It is diffi- 

 cult to think of any subject connected 

 with potato-growing, which he has not 

 covered. History, botany, climate and 

 soils, fertilizers, planting and cultiva- 

 tion, insects and diseases, harvesting, 

 marketing, and by-products, are all 

 discussed, and the last chapter considers 

 the important matter of profits. A 

 review of genetic experiments on the 

 potato brings together many results in a 

 convenient form. 



HISTORY OF THE POTATO 



Considering how recently the potato 

 was brought to the attention of the 

 civilized world, it is remarkable that 

 it should now be the greatest food crop, 

 supplying about one-fourth of the entire 

 diet of European countries. It was 

 first discovered by the Spaniards in the 

 neighborhood of Quito, Ecuador, where 

 it was cultivated by the natives. The 

 first notice is that of Pedro de Leon 

 (1550) who mentions that the inhabi- 

 tants of Peru lived largely on maize and 



"papas," the latter the Indian name 

 of the potato which is still universally 

 used in Latin America. The natives 

 often dried their potatoes in the sun 

 and made them into flour — a practice 

 followed in Europe but little known in 

 North America, although it should be 

 widely used. 



The vegetable may have been carried 

 to Spain as early as 1535; thence it 

 spread all over Europe, but only as a 

 botanical curiosity. The Spaniards 

 brought it from South to North America 

 some time before 1585, since friends of 

 Sir Walter Raleigh secured it in Virginia 

 in 1586 and brought it to England. At 

 the discovery of America, von Humboldt 

 says, the plant was cultivated in 

 parts of western South America from 

 Chile to Colombia, but not in Mexico, 

 and there is no record of its being found 

 wild in North America. Many forms 

 are found growing wild today in vSouth 

 America, but it is impossible to say that 

 any of them is an originally wild form. 

 The potato has, perhaps, been so long 

 under cultivation that the wild proto- 

 type has ceased to exist. 



Europeans long looked on the potato 

 with disfavor, and its culinary use spread 

 only as an emergency food in time of 

 famine, although it had become quite 

 widely used as a food for animals par- 

 ticularly in Germany. It is only in the 

 last century it has become a staple on 

 the dinner table. The number of 

 varieties has become very large, but 

 there are scarcely more than a half 

 dozen types in the United States which 

 possess real commercial importance. 

 Experimenters will from time to time 

 be able, perhaps, to produce something 

 better than is now grown. But the 

 task of the farmer is merely to pick out 

 the best strains from the present varie- 

 ties. This task he can easily achieve by 

 selecting only the best hills for planting; 

 and a little care in this selection, even 

 if no new acreage is planted, ought 

 eventually to double the value of a crop 

 which is already worth half a billion 

 dollars a year to the United States. 



