PICKING POTATOES 



411 



668. Picking. No satisfactory method of picking up 

 potatoes by machinery has as yet been invented. Picking 

 is done by hand, the picker using a basket, a bushel box, or 

 a sack. Sometimes several baskets are set on a stone boat 

 and hauled between the rows with one horse, the pickers 

 tossing the potatoes into 

 the baskets. In Maine 

 they are commonly gath- 

 ered in baskets and then 

 put into barrels for mar- 

 keting. 



559. Sorting. Some 

 small potatoes are always 

 produced with the large 

 ones, and often there are 

 irregular, sunburned, and 

 diseased tubers. If these 

 are mixed with the good, 

 smooth, uniform potatoes 

 the quaUty of the whole 

 crop is lowered. On this 

 account most growers 

 find it profitable to sort 

 their potatoes, offering 

 for sale only the best graAe, and using the poorer ones for 

 stock feed or for the manufacture of flour, starch or alcohol. 

 Sorting is best done when the potatoes are being gathered, for 

 at that time one can most easily reject the undesirable tubers. 

 Machines for sorting are used to a considerable extent, but 

 these of course can be effective only in separating potatoes 

 according to size. 



560. Storing. Potatoes keep best at a temperature be- 

 tween 32° and 40° F., though necessarily they are often kept 

 for a considerable length of time at higher temperatures. 

 Early in the fall they are veiy commonly put in piles on the 



Figure 139. — A good potato digger. 



