32 



BULLETIN OF 



Massachusetts Board of Agriculture . 



POTATO-GROWING SUGGESTIONS. 



By Chas. D. Woods, Sc.D., Director, Maine Agricultural Experiment Station. 



While potato growing is somewhat a matter of soil and climate, it 

 is even more dependent upon the ability, knowledge and energy of 

 the man who is trying to grow them. This fact was very clearly 

 demonstrated in Aroostook County, Maine, in the season of 1907. 

 Aroostook County is perhaps the richest agricultural county in the 

 United States, and the potato is the money crop. Upwards of 

 11,000,000 bushels of potatoes were shipped from the crop of 1906, 

 besides all that went into starch. The shipments from the crop of 

 1907 was less than half that of the preceding year. And yet the good 

 farmers had as large and in some instances larger crops than in 1906. 

 The season of 1906 was favorable for a large crop, and everybody that 

 planted potatoes succeeded in growing and harvesting a good crop. 

 The season of 1907 was unfavorable, and only the good farmers had 

 good crops. The men who thoroughly prepared the seed bed, on well- 

 selected soil, planted only what they could properly care for, who 

 used fertilizer liberally, cultivated all the season, and who sprayed 

 early and often against insect and fungous enemies and harvested as 

 soon as the crop was ready, not only had a large yield per acre, but 

 the high prices that ruled for potatoes after the poorly grown early 

 ones were marketed brought it about that with many Aroostook 

 farmers the season of 1907 was the best for years. On the other 

 hand, the farmer that planted illy adapted and slovenly prepared 

 land, of larger area than he could well care for, who neglected to spray 

 because the weather was not favorable for the spray to adhere, who 

 had so many acres he could not get them harvested before the un- 

 usually early freezing of the ground (over 11,000 acres of potatoes 

 were frozen in and remained unharvested in Aroostook County in 

 1907), found the year a disastrous one. In many instances the crop 

 harvested was not sufficient to pay the fertilizer bills. 



By practising the methods of the good farmers of Aroostook County, 

 man}' men in other parts of I\Iaine are successful with potatoes as a 

 money crop. There is no reason why men in Massachusetts may not 

 grow the potato at fully as good a margin of profit as the farmer in 

 Maine. 



The Potato demands Constant Care. 



At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts State Board of Agri- 

 culture, in 1901, the writer in answer to a question said, in part: 

 "If he plants a few potatoes, there is not one farmer in twenty but 

 what something else would crowd in, and he would let the potatoes 



