Potatoes The Seed. 171 



the frost out and warm up the pile, but not nearly as quickly as 

 sun and rain and warmth from below together would. On the 

 first of April I have found my pile frozen solidly, when there was 

 no frost in the fields, nor had there been for some time. This 

 helps about keeping pile cool very much. I have kept early po- 

 tatoes in good shape until early in May nearly always. Neigh- 

 bors and friends have tried it with success. 



I have had good success getting my seed from Maine, and 

 having it come just before planting time. It has arrived in per- 

 fect shape, but this year I got fourteen barrels, and for some reason 

 they had sprouted a very little. Our own seed, kept in pit, was 

 in better shape. But the change of seed, getting it from a dis- 

 tance and from the North, where the season is more favorable, will 

 doubtless pay me well. Selection of seed will help greatly, but 

 my experience is that, sooner or later, a variety runs down in yield 

 or vitality, and we must either get fresh seed of the same kind 

 from a better locality, or get a newer potato. Change of seed 

 will help the old kind for a time, and then we must have some- 

 thing new. I do not believe in rushing into every new potato 

 that comes along, but don't be too slow to change, or too set in the 

 idea that you have as good as any one. I well remember one 

 young friend whom I helped into the potato business, years ago, 

 and who has made some money. He long contended that his 

 Early Rose, from careful selection, were fully holding their own, or 

 gaining. I always smiled at his positiveness, for I held the same 

 idea once, but told him it was simply a matter of time when he 

 would change his mind. Last fall he wrote me that the change 

 had come. I could spend many pages on this point, but will only 

 stop to give a single illustration from my farm last season. I have 

 been growing the Monroe seedling largely for two or three years. 

 It is a very fine medium late potato, and yielded all I could ask. 

 A year ago I had a barrel of potatoes sent me to test, of a new 

 variety not on the market then; in fact, they were not named. 

 When the seed arrived I felt like kicking myself for promising to 

 try them. They were in a miserable, poor condition. But I had 

 to plant what I could cull out that would anyway answer. I 

 planted five rows, sixty rods long, through a field of Monroes. Soon 

 after they came up, a neighbor came along and asked what was 

 the matter with these five rows. The stand was poor and growth 

 feeble, noticeably so to every p'asser-by. Again I thought what a 

 fool I had been, when I had plenty of good seed. But after a 

 time the Monroes seemed to have done their best, and these five 

 rows still kept on, and as true as you live, in a short time folks 

 began to stop and ask what I had done to these five rows to make 

 them so much better than the rest of field. When I dug them, I 

 got just 6% bushels more potatoes to the row from the new 

 seedling, than from the old, or about 100 bushels more per acre, 

 and the Monroe was quite new, too. But now what sized seed 



