Vol XLI. No. 1710. NEW YORK, NOV. 4, 1882. p “mym TS ' 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1882, by the Rural New-Yorker, In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.] 
±kU) Crops. 
experiment (gtmmdjs of the $ur»I 
Item - Worker. 
SEEDLING POTATOES. 
HOW TO SAVE AND SOW THE SEEDS AND RAISE 
THE SEEDLINGS. 
How to Produce Maketable Potatoes in Two 
Years from Seed—Farmers should Raise 
their Own Varieties — Illustrations, 
from Nature, of the First Season's 
Growth, etc. 
It doesn’t require a very long stretch of 
greenhouses in which to sow the seeds in the 
Pall. If not, by the aid of a flower-pot or so 
and a sunny window, we may, from seed, 
produce tubers large enough for the table in 
two seasons. In fact, the seeds may be sown 
in prepared plots out-nf doors in early May 
and, if well attended to, they will produce 
tubers which the next year will grow as large 
as the smallest of what are called marketable 
potatoes. But in these days of potato beetles 
this is a hazardous and uncertain method, on- 
less the first leaves are constantly watched or 
covered with glasses or sieves. If these early 
leaves are injured or destroyed by beetles or 
insects of any kind the plant, having no recu¬ 
perative material, perishes. To begin our 
story, let ns gather the 
Seed Balls, 
apples,or by whatever name one chooses to call 
sowing time arrives. The seed ball of a potato 
is the proper fruit, as the tomato is the fruit 
of the tomato plant. The tuber of a potato 
ia merely a swollen underground stem, quite 
distinct from the roots. Indeed, tubers often 
form above ground in the axils of the green 
stems, as no doubt all of our readers hate had 
occasion to notice. The so-called " eyes” of 
the potato tuber are buds which, as we also 
know, often push and form stems and leaves 
feeding upon the decomposing flesh of the 
tuber itself. Potatoes may be, and are, grown 
from these stems, and in this way large quan¬ 
tities may be raised from a single tuber by 
pulling off the shoots and planting them as 
they grow. But this is a branch of the sub¬ 
ject which need not be treated here. 
In times gone by potato plants fruited plen¬ 
tifully, and potato apples could be procured 
purpose of crossing, or a single seed ball. The 
past season, of 50 different kinds ten bore 
seed balls, one—Wall's Orange—in large quan¬ 
tities, a cluster of which is shown at Fig. 409. 
When it is considered that potatoes have been 
bred and cultivated for the tubers alone, it is 
not surprising, perhaps, that the plants should 
incline to fruit less and less with every year. 
Some say that the yield of potatoes 50 years 
ago was greater than now, and that, therefore, 
the potato is less productive now than then. 
This, while perhaps true in fact, is no doubt 
an erroneous view as to the cause. If otr an¬ 
cestors had had our present varieties they 
would probably have produced very much 
larger crops. The buds or eyes of potatoes 
sometimes vary, producing potatoes that dif¬ 
fer in quality, in color or in time of maturing. 
Thus we have the Late Rose, Beauty of He- 
TUBERS FROM SEED THE FIRST YEAR.—(Showing various Forms.)—Fig. 406. 
memory to recall the time when to raise po¬ 
tato plants from the true seed was deemed 
an undertaking which required skill and ex¬ 
perience, and not less than three years of time. 
Now-a-days one year suffices, if we have 
them, from the potato vines as soon as they 
begin to die. These may be kept until they 
begin to wither or rot, when the flesh is 
washed from the seed and the latter dried and 
preserved the same as any other seeds until 
in unlimited quantities. It is different now. 
Many of our present kinds do not fruit at all- 
some of them do not even bloom. Two years 
ago we raised 63 different varieties and were 
unable either to procure any pollen for the 
bron, etc., from Early Rose and Beauty of 
Hebron. But potatoes never “ mix in the 
hill” from contact, as some suppose. We can 
produce new varieties at will only from the 
seed. Readers of the Rural New-Yorker 
