466 THE POTATO 



to one and seven eighths inches in diameter, but 

 when they buy Scotch seed, the Scotch seed 

 grower furnishes larger sized seed. Their seed 

 stocks are largely selected from the market crops 

 that run through a one and seven eighths inch 

 mesh. They are selected in the field and are im- 

 mediately put in crates or storage boxes about 

 three inches deep, and stacked up in the open air 

 as long as safe from frost or freezing weather, 

 which is usually about the middle of October. 

 Then they are stored in their glass storage houses 

 for the winter. 



Two days before my arrival at Mr. Dennis's, 

 Monday evening, they had sprayed a forty-acre 

 field of May Queen for leaf blight. These were 

 early potatoes they expected to harvest the fol- 

 lowing week for market. When late that evening 

 they discovered indication of leaf blight, they knew 

 the spraying had been delayed two days too long. 

 That night arrangements were made for thirty or 

 forty men to commence pulling the tops in the 

 early morning. This keeps the disease from at- 

 tacking the tubers. The potatoes were not much 

 more than half grown. In two days' time the 

 tops had been pulled from this field and thrown in 

 neat winrows. The rest of the crop would be left 

 in the ground for twenty days, then lifted and put 

 in boxes and kept in the open until danger of 

 frosts, then stored for seed. They were too green 

 for market, but would make good seed. To a po- 

 tato grower of the sunny irrigated West this fun- 

 gous blight in its rapidity of development is fright- 

 ening, as in three or four days 50 per cent, of the 

 tubers will be diseased. They will have great 

 brown spots, looking like brown blisters. These 

 potatoes had been sprayed some two or three 



