POTATO CULTURE. 127 



once to let them be in the ground. Later he told me that he 

 did just as I told him, and was largely the gainer. We have 

 not had much experience with rot. One year we lost per- 

 haps 1000 bushels in this way, in August. As soon as it 

 came I stopped digging and selling, as it was almost impos- 

 sible to tell sound from unsound tubers. About the first of 

 September the diseased ones were all soft, and the trouble 

 seemed to have stopped spreading, and we went on digging, 

 selling, and storing. I took all risk on those sold, when they 

 followed my directions, and no trouble ever came of it. 

 This was the genuine rot, as bad on dry upland as anywhere ; 

 but our crop was so large that year that we hardly felt the 

 loss. It was the great large choice tubers that rotted, 

 though. Whenever the season is such that our richest land 

 produces 300 bushels per acre, or more, we are apt to find 

 traces of rot. With a big crop, on overrich soil, I should 

 want to dig as early as possible, and sell for immediate eat- 

 ing. A young man wrote me the other day about a very 

 rich, heavily manured piece of land, asking what variety he 

 had better put on. He said old men all told him his crop 

 would rot down. I told him his best chance was in planting 

 Early Ohio, early, and digging them the moment they would 

 go to market, and rushing them right off. He might thus 

 get ahead of rot, his neighbors be taught that, where there 

 is a will there is a way, and he might make a good deal of 

 money. 



Where potatoes are followed by wheat, as in our rotation, 

 we need to dig as soon as they are ripe, to get them out of 

 the way ; but there are advantages all the same. Besides 

 those spoken of, we have better weather and longer days 

 than late in the fall. I might say a word more in regard to 

 shrinkage. When we dig as soon as the skins stop slipping, 

 there will be about 10 per cent shrinkage between then and 

 the following spring. Of course, this will vary with season 

 and variety. In a wet season, with a large growth, they will 

 shrink more than in a dry year with a small growth. But 



