POTATO CULTURE 



187 



ricli enough and is kept moist enough is an ideal place for growing 

 potatoes. But on an average farm the thing to do is to select soil 

 for potato growing that is of medium texture. 



Now, as to methods of growing potatoes. There is no best way 

 of growing potatoes. Practices will differ in different localities and 

 with different soils. Nevertheless, there are certain fundamentals 

 that need to be taken into consideration. Different seasons different 

 methods would be recommended. We cannot foresee the seasons. 

 The method of handling the crop best adapted to one season may 

 not be the method best adapted to others, depending on weather 

 conditions. 



I don't suppose there is one farmer in a hundred who has the 

 erroneous idea that anybody can most successfully grow potatoes 

 year after year on the same soil. Potatoes should be grown in a 

 rotation. One of the best places I know of for a potato crop is follow- 

 ing a clover crop. The ideal preparation for a potato crop, as I have 

 come to see it, would be to mow the clover the season previous, and 

 soon after haying, plow that land and sow it thickly to rye. The 

 following spring, before the rye is very large, say twelve to twenty- 

 four inches high, plow it under. The objection to letting it get large 

 is that plowing under much of the strawy material is apt to create a 

 cushion that will not let the moisture from below pass up. 



Question: How early can you sow the rye.^^ 



Professor Stone : The earlier the better, but I w ould not con- 

 sider it the work you should give precedence to everything else on 

 the farm. I have spoken about the necessity of having good seed. 

 Having procured that seed, be sure that it is not, injured before it 

 is planted. I believe farmers over the State of New York are losing 

 more than they think simply by not taking good care of their potato 

 seed. So many are planting potatoes that are sprouted or that are 

 wilted. We have done some experimental work along that line, 

 and have found very marked differences. In one case where we 

 emphasized it by keeping a seed a very long time in cold storage to 

 hold it dormant, and allowing another lot to wilt in the barn, we got 

 one hundred fifty-nine per cent increase in the dormant seed over the 

 one we allowed to wilt. Another fact is this. Farmers are not 

 planting their potatoes deep enough for best results. When a farmer 

 says he has planted potatoes three or four inches deep, he is fortunate 

 if he finds out in the end that he has planted two or three inches deep. 



