THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



37 



CUTTING SEED POTATOES. 



Dr. Sturtevant's Address at Utica. 



The third Evening Meeting at the 

 State Fair was devoted to hearing and 

 discussing an address by Director Stur- 

 tevant of the State Experiment Station, 

 on the proper manner of cutting seed 

 potatoes and planting them — substan- 

 tially as below : 



The speaker began by calling atten- 

 tion to the following points : — 



1. A potato is covered with eyes, which 

 form the origins of the shoots. When the 

 whole potato is planted in its natural 

 condition, only two, three, or very rarely 

 four of these eyes vegetate. But rub and 

 injure the eyes, or scald them slightly, 

 and the number of the shoots is greatly 

 increased ; 15 to 30 will start from each 

 eye, and often one eye will give as many 

 sprouts as the whole potato would natur- 

 ally have done. Nature seems to work at 

 a great waste in potatoes, as she does in 

 com-poUen. 



2. The common opinion is that if the 

 whole potato, be planted, the strongest 

 eyes will develop, the others remaining 

 dormant. But who can tell which are the 

 ' ' strongest ' ' eyes ? The fact is that if you 

 plant a whole potato, and two or three 

 shoots start, and you then rub oflF some of 

 them, a great many more will appear to 

 take their place. 



3. If you injure the eyes a little more 

 deeply than is necessary to multiply the 

 number of shoots, by pouring on boiling 

 water, just avoiding killing the eye, then 

 a mass of little tubers (15 to 25) will form 

 instead of the shoot — illustrating the fact 

 that a single eye has the capacity of 

 originating all the potatoes that a whole 

 plant ought to be expected to bear. 



4. The new tuber is always borne above 

 the seed. Sometimes the latter (all but 

 the skin) is completely absorbed by the 

 growing plant ; sometimes you find it 

 apparently almost unchanged. 



Now the first absorption takes place 

 within dejlnate lines in the potato — 

 which lines may be traced and studied 

 by splitting the pottito and soaking it 

 in carmine water. It will be seen that 



a line of vital tissue, resembling cam- 

 bium, runs through the centre of the 

 tuber, with a branch running to each eye, 

 which fact is of the highest importance. 

 Tubers may form anywhere on one of 

 these vital lines ; the life of the potato 

 is not confined to the eyes. This is 

 strikingly shown by planting a whole 

 potato with the eyes all destroyed, 

 which will sometimes result in the 

 formation of a new potato inside the old 

 one, without any vegetation whatever^ 

 the old tuber shrinking as the new one 

 grows. The practical lesson is : cut 

 each eye deep to the centre, and at a 

 certain definite angle to be ascertained 

 by experiment, and you will get the 

 maximum possible yield — best in qua- 

 lity also — from that eye. 



Trials of this plan in the field this year 

 at the Station resulted as follows: A 

 hundred hills were planted in rows a 

 foot apart. Where whole potatoes, or 

 halves, or quarters, were planted, there 

 was no sort of uniformity in the yield; 

 the crop of adjoining hills varied as 

 much as three to one. But where single 

 eyes were planted, cut as above described 

 so as to preserve the axis of the eye, 

 the product was surprisingly uniform in 

 all the rows. In every case, the piece 

 cut deep, however small, gave a much 

 better yield and quality than a large 

 piece cut shallow. 



In regard to the planting of potatoes, 

 Dr. S. early this spring started a number 

 of eyes in sand in-doors, and grew them 

 to three feet in height, but they formed 

 no tubers. When, however, they were 

 transferred to the soil, they began 

 immediately to form tubers. He judges 

 that it is necessary that the temperature 

 of the earth should be lower than that 

 of the air in order that a crop may be 

 produced. He has tried high hilling — 

 four to five feet. The result was few 

 and very small tubers, because the plant 

 had to do so much growing and digging. 



