1910. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
491 
NEW VARIETIES OF POTATOES. 
Growing From the Seed. 
The first thing to do is to find potatoes that will 
bear seed balls. Most potatoes will put forth blossoms, 
but will not set a seed ball. This is the hardest thing 
I have to contend with. Sometimes for two or three 
years I do not get seed balls. The potato I get seed 
balls from is blue, flesh white, and fine quality for 
eating. When I get this seed pollenized with other 
good kinds, I have seed that will produce some of the 
finest potatoes in cultivation to-day. The way I get 
my seed pollenized with other good kinds, I plant 
them in my garden, about two rows of kind I want 
to cross; then one row of blue and then two rows 
more like the first ones, and so on until all are planted. 
When I want to get an extra cross I plant a number 
of different kinds besides the blue. I let the bees do 
the pollenizing; they will do it better than man can, 
and you will get results from crossing this way. 
Keep off all bugs. I use “Bug Death” dry; it is the 
best thing I can find for potatoes or anything else that 
bugs or worms eat, and it will increase the potato 
crop. Let the seed balls hang on the vines as long 
as you can—that is, until frosts come, so the seed 
will be well matured. A good seed ball ought to be 
about one inch in diameter; then you are sure seed 
will grow. To get seed from ball take dish big 
enough to hold all your seed balls, and cut them in half 
and put them in water. Let them stand until it begins 
to ferment, then the seed will let loose from the fruit; 
then wash clean and dry. Sow about March 15, or 
about that time, in box in the house. Have good 
garden soil, nice and fine. Fill your box to about one 
inch of top, then sow in your seed very 
thin. Then sift on some more dirt 
very lightly; if you cover too deep they 
will not grow. Wet soil with warm 
water. Set box where it will be quite 
warm near stove until the little potatoes 
begin to show themselves above ground. 
Then set them in window. When about 
one inch high, transplant in another box, 
let them grow in this box until all dan¬ 
ger of frost is past, then set them in 
the open ground and watch them grow. 
Keep bugs off; you will be surprised at 
the amount of vines one little seed will 
grow. Let them stay in the ground as 
long as you can, so as to give them all 
the growth possible, and then they will 
be very small. The largest I ever raised 
the first year weighed four ounces, the 
largest I ever saw. I get all kinds— 
early, medium and late—and all colors 
and shapes. A person has to see them 
before he knows how pretty they are. 
It is impossible to judge anything about 
them the first year, so all should be 
planted; the next year one in each hill,' 
for the littlest potato may turn out to 
be the best yielder, and I have had some 
colored ones come out white the next year, so the 
best way is to plant all the second year. Then after 
that you must use your own judgment and throw 
away all you think without value. Save only the 
largest and best shaped ones to plant the third year. 
When I dig the crop the third year I keep every 
hill separate in little boxes made for that purpose, 
and mark them how old, whether early, medium or 
late. Fourth year you begin to realize what you have. 
Mark off plot of ground in your garden so that each 
lot of potatoes will plant full rows through; then 
mark with flat stick, or shingle is best, each row, so 
you will not get them mixed when digging. When 
digging them this year sort them well; do not save 
any misshapen tubers. Keep them all uniform shape 
as near as you can; never save any little ones, be¬ 
cause you want your potatoes to grow better. I think 
planting little ones runs potatoes out the quickest of- 
anything. Half the farmers I know plant potato 
seed that they cannot sell in market. Then again 
they will have a lot in cellar that is half rotten; 
cut off the rot and plant what is sound, and then 
wonder why their potatoes run out so soon. The 
fourth year I throw away all that do not look promis¬ 
ing, but one cannot always be sure. Sometimes at 
five years they fail, but not often. I never send any 
out for trial to seed firms until the sixth year. The 
fifth year you will find your good potato if you have 
one. Watch them closely this year for blight and 
rot; some will blight before they are half grown. 
Some will partly blight, some will not blight at all, 
and you can make up your mind that the potato that 
does not blight when it is blight year is no good. It 
may be a fair yielder, but when cooked it will be 
s °ggy and not fit to eat. Potato bugs will not even 
eat the vines. I do not save any such potatoes after 
I find out how they cook. Where you find blight you 
find rot. Some rot more than others. You have all 
of these things to consider when you are originating 
new potatoes; any person trying it will find there 
is something to do besides planting seed. 
When I dig my potatoes the fifth year I save all 
good hills—that is, all that have good market potatoes 
and hills that have no little ones, throw out all mis¬ 
shapen ones, and the more you sort for well-shaped 
potatoes the better it will be and the better sale it 
will have. Never look for one that grows five or 
six big potatoes to the hill that weigh 1*4 or two 
CHICKEN GIZZARD, SHOWING WORMS. Fig. 185. 
pounds apiece. They are too large, and do not sell 
well in market. I want one that will yield 15 or 20 
good market tubers to hill. When you find a potato 
like this you know that you have something good. I 
know one seedsman that bought a new potato. He 
tried it first year and it gave a big yield, and then 
he bought it. He thought it had merit, and he would 
introduce it, but the next year it produced nothing, 
so to get rid of it he gave a tuber to each customer 
that ordered seed. You will see some seed firnis 
advertise blight-proof potatoes. There is no potato 
in existence to-day that is blight-proof everywhere. I 
would like to have some of them here in Vermont; 
I would soon see them blight. Then another adver¬ 
tiser will send out “Four-year-old seedling; from one 
pound of seed planted yield 26 bushels.” Then an¬ 
other blight-proof potato, “one pound seed planted 23 
bushels.” There is not one man in 500 who can get 
SULKY PLOWING TOO MUCH FOR THE TEAM. Fig. 18?. 
23 or 26 bushels from one pound of seed. You would 
do just as well to send your money to Florida to 
buy a farm in some swamp, or buy some Sunberry 
seed for an investment, and then ask The R. N.-Y. to 
get your money back for you. The sixth year I cal¬ 
culate to have my potato fixed in character, so when 
I send them out they are all right, good yielders and 
just what I state that they are in every respect. 
Vermont. l. b. surdam. 
R. N.-Y.—A picture of Mr. Surdam’s house is 
shown at Fig. 186. He has only one acre of land, 
“but you ought to see the fruit we raise.” The new 
potato varieties are originated in this garden. We 
show this to let our readers know what a man who 
knows how can do with a small piece of land. 
PLOWING ROUGH LAND WITH GANG PLOW. 
When driving in Delaware Co., N. Y., the writer 
saw a piece of land that was very stony, being broken 
with a gang plow and one pair of horses of medium 
weight, probably 1,000 or 1,100 pounds each. I re¬ 
member how in my early life I wrestled with the plow 
handles many days, plowing land like this, and how 
many times I pulled back a heavy plow, when it was 
thrown out by a stone, and how tired I was at night. 
With my best efforts many places were “cut and cov¬ 
ered.” In the instance mentioned, I saw a farmer 
sitting on his gang plow, doing no work but driving 
his team, and turning the furrows with few breaks 
in them. The weight of the man and plow kept it 
in the ground. Of course, when the plow struck a 
large fast stone, it must be backed up and lifted over 
it. Fig. 187 shows it at work. It was evident his 
team was too light. More work was being done than 
with the walking plow, and the draft was too much. 
I have seen'a pair of heavy draft horses, as Percherons, 
Weighing each 1,500, that would have drawn the plow 
easily. So much work is being now done on the farm 
by machinery that there is need of breeding the heavy 
draft horses. The work is becoming lighter for men, 
but much heavier for the horses. With 
men riding horse power now plows the 
ground, harrows, sows and harvests the 
crops, all with very little hand work or 
manipulation. On level, smooth land 
a hay crop can now be cut and put in the 
barn without hardly touching it with 
hand tools. If the horse must do our 
work, until we have learned how to 
harness electricity or some other motive 
power, let us breed a horse strong 
enough to do the work easily—one that 
can better eat and digest coarse rough- 
age, as clover hay, then feed and care 
for them well and treat them as faith¬ 
ful servants and friends. Too many 
farmers are trying to save money by 
overworking and underfeeding their 
horses, trying to get the most service 
at smallest cost, thinking the least money 
they have invested in horseflesh, the 
better for them, and the thin, weak horse 
is kept and worked for all there is in 
him, and he is so much ahead for all the 
work he can get with a small invest¬ 
ment. I have seen men talking tem¬ 
perance and Christianity at every op¬ 
portunity, and getting all the work pos¬ 
sible out of just such horses. Let us have the gang 
plow and all the good labor-saving machinery, but 
let us keep large, strong horses, always in good flesh, 
always worked so as to have a reserve of energy, and 
thinking of ourselves as in their place, changing the 
Golden Rule to read, “As ye would that horses do 
unto you, do ye also unto them.” 
W. H. JENKINS. 
MISBRANDING FRUIT PACKAGES. 
Under the pure food and drug law the question 
of printing geographical names on packages of food 
had to be decided. There are “Oregon apples,” “New 
York Baldwins,” “Indian River Oranges,” “Rocky 
Ford melons,” etc., the name being used as a mark 
of superior quality. The following decision has now 
been made: 
The board holds that the terms “Rocky Ford” and 
“Indian River” have not become sufficiently generic to 
indicate styles, types or brands of melons and oranges, 
respectively, but that these geographical names are only 
properly applied to the product of the restricted area for 
the melons which are grown in or near Rocky Ford, and 
for the product grown in or near the Indian River. Inas¬ 
much as the term “Rocky Fprd” has thus become asso¬ 
ciated with a melon of peculiar excellence of a certain 
geographical locality, the board holds that it is unlawful 
to sell in interstate commerce melons not grown in the 
Rocky Ford district as “Rocky Ford Seed” melons. The 
terms are nearly alike, the intent is to deceive, and the 
law provides that a label should not be false or de¬ 
ceptive in any particular. 
We have known cases where local growers buy up 
discarded packages and fill them with grapes, apples, 
peaches or melons and sell them on the neputation of 
the brand which belongs to others. This will be an 
unhealthy practice if the Government authorities 
catch them at it. Out of more than 3,000 cases of 
violation of the food laws the Government has lost 
only three. 
THE HOME OF A VERMONT POTATO ORIGINATOR. Fig. 186. 
