Howe’s Potato Manual for 1891. 
Gr. I ) . HOWE, 
North Hadley, Hampshire County, Mass. 
Dear Friends It is with pleasure that I make you another of my annual visits through 
this, my Manual for ’91. I hope the visit will be received and enjoyed with as much interest 
and enthusiasm by you as it is made by me. 
It has been my intention now for some time to devote a large portion of my Manual of some 
particular year to a description of my method of growing potatoes, illustrating and describing 
each tool I use and thus striving to make it as valuable a compendium as possible on the subject 
of potato growing. It is my intention that when I get to this particular Manual, it shall be of 
as much interest to the person who grows only a few bushels as to the grower whose bushels are 
numbered by the thousand. It will aim to give some hints that will help you to increase the 
quantity, improve the quality, and lessen the expense, which done must increase the profit, a 
somewhat desirable condition of affairs. In this I shall not depend upon my own experience 
alone. My acquaintance with potato growers is naturally somewhat extensive, and I shall en- 
deavor to give the methods and experience of some of the most successful of these, which will 
add to the value of my own observations and tend to make the treatise applicable to growers 
in all sections of the country. This will increase the size of the Manual and I shall probably feel 
obliged to make a charge for it, though it will probably be sent to all my former customers free, 
as a complimentary acknowledgment of my appreciation of their favors. 
I have decided not to carry out this idea this year, but give you instead this unpretentious 
little pamphlet, which however you may not find wholly devoid of interest and value to you. 
The following item from the American Cultivator contains a very important point that I 
want to impress upon my readers, and so I quote it entire : 
“ POTATO SPROUTING. 
A recent bulletin of the New York experiment station announces some surprising results 
in storing potatoes grown in various localities North and South. Quite unexpectedly to the 
I experimenters, Southern grown potatoes did not sprout so quickly as those grown in Maine. 
| Yet, on trial, it was found that the Northern seed, though exhausted by sprouting, produced 
the best crops, though even here there was no uniformity in the result. The comparative 
ripeness of potatoes has much to do with their tendency to sprout early. A fully ripe and 
dried potato sprouts easily and quickly. It also contains the most starch, and even after one 
or two sets of sprouts have been rubbed off it may yet have more starch to nourish the germ 
until it can root than has the watery, immature potato. It is the habit of some Southern 
potato growers to grow a crop very late in the season, and gather when frost kills the vines 
for seed the following Spring. It may be some Southern potatoes thus grown that Prof. Ro - 
erts made the basis of this experiment. Early planted Southern potatoes, especially of early 
