IRISH POTATOES 241 

 CULTIVATION. 



It is not necessary in a work that deals mainly with the manurial re- 

 quirements of crops to go at length into the familiar culture of the potato. 

 Methods of culture will differ with the soil and climate, and a method per- 

 fectly correct under one set of conditions, will be found wanting in some 

 respect under different conditions of soil and climate. In the conditions 

 present on most farms north of the Ohio and Potomac, and in the mountain 

 regions of the South where similar climatic conditions prevail, we would al- 

 ways practice rather deep planting and very shallow and constant cultivation ; 

 never, in fact, "laying by" the crop till it is made. Assuming that farmers 

 everywhere have abandoned the old plan of planting in hills, we would plant 

 the sets fifteen inches apart in the furrow. Whether large or small potatoes 

 are used as seed should depend not merely on the size of the tuber, but on the 

 conditions under which it was produced. 



The potato is merely a bunch of stems under ground, surrounded by a 

 mass of starchy matter, and the eyes are the terminal buds of the branches. 

 Now if these tubers have been produced under conditions that did not favor 

 the increase of the mass of starchy matter, and the small tubers are the best 

 of the crop, they will make good seed. But if the small tubers are merely 

 the immature little ones from a crop where there were very large and fine pota- 

 toes, they are small from lack of vigor in that particular branch and will in- 

 herit weakness of growth. But in selecting seed potatoes in the field I 

 would rather take the small potatoes from a hill that made a great many 

 than the large potatoes from a hill that made but two or three. Years ago, 

 while digging potatoes, I found in a row of fine, large potatoes, one plant that 

 made no large ones, but had, by actual count, 44 potatoes not larger than a 

 walnut in the largest, and some still smaller. Here was evidently what gar- 

 deners call a "sport," or variation from the normal. The variety was the 

 Beauty of Hebron, a potato which, in our experience, makes large potatoes, 

 but not usually many in a hill. I saved the prolific hill and the next year 

 it made potatoes about as large as the normal type, but far more in a hill, 

 and, of course, a larger crop, and for years after I found this a superior strain 

 of the Hebron. So it may be that small potatoes may be the starting point 

 for an improvement. 



But whether the potatoes are large or small, we cannot believe that small 

 pieces are as good to plant as large ones. The starch in the tuber is put there 

 by the plant for the sustenance .of the young plant till it makes green leaves 

 in the sunlight and is able to store its own starch. As the potato sprouts, 

 the starch is changed into glucose for the food of the living matter. Pota- 



