334 
^he RURAL NEW-YORKER 
March 3, 1917. 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
The Story of Potato Planting 
I*AKT I. 
Will you tell, for the benefit of new 
subscribers (I am one), how to plant 
potatoes, how much firtilizer to use, 
kind, when to plant, early and late, how 
to cut, one eye or two, half or whole 
potato? I’otatoes to be planted in East¬ 
ern Massachusetts on sandy and loam 
soil. Best kind of potatoes to use. I 
have a book on potatoes, but after read¬ 
ing it through I find I know less about 
potatoes than when I started to read it. 
Barnstable Co., Mass. E. E. B. 
The job of trying to imtruct a Cape 
Cod man after he has failed to under¬ 
stand one of the highest authorities in 
the country is something like rushing in 
whei’e angels fear to stand. The trou¬ 
ble probably is that the high authority 
forgot all about the lowly growers. He 
■was talking to the big men who plant 
great fields of potatoes with all needed 
implements, and capital enough to fi¬ 
nance a big job. Planting by hand no 
doubt seems like a very small proposi¬ 
tion to him, as he does not realize that 
a great proi)ortion of the potato crop is 
planted in this way. It is not for the 
man with the little crop to imitate the 
big grower, but on the other side, the 
big grower cannot do better than come 
as close as possible to the condition 
made possible by hand culture. I will 
just try to tell him how we raise a 
few acres of potatoes. 
The Seed. —That, of course, comes 
first. For our use Irish Cobbler of a 
good strain is the standard variety. It is 
not of high quality, but sells well when 
dug early, is hardy and gives us a good 
yield. ^Ve experiment with other 
varieties, but come back to Irish Cobble” 
for the early croj). Now, the first thing 
to remember is that what we call the 
seed or tuber is a part of the plant— 
not a root, like carrots or turnips, but 
a part of the stem enlarged under¬ 
ground. We must understand this for 
two reasons. Being a part of the plant, 
the tuber or seed piece will produce an¬ 
other plant like the one it came from. 
In a Avay it is something like taking a 
piece of wood out of a bearing apple 
tree and grafting it into another tree. 
The graft will not only carry the habits 
and character of the parent tree, but if 
there be insects upon it or diseases in 
the tree, the graft carries them along. 
Good potato seed therefore can only 
come from i)lants whiel. are healthy and 
well matured. Many failures in the po¬ 
tato crop are w’orked out before the seed 
process starts, just as children or animals 
that are not well born are doomed to 
sickness or failure before they grow up. 
How It Works.—Go through any 
field of potatoes just before the vines 
fall and compare the hills. Some of 
them are big and strong, while others 
are small and spindling. As a rule the 
big vines carry six or more of fine, large 
potatoes with other smaller ones coming 
on. There will be other big vines -with 
a large number of little potatoe.s in the 
hill. Such plants seem to spend their 
time starting a great many tubers, but 
hey finish few, if any, before frost or 
disease kills them. I nOiice much of this 
difference in my apple trees. Some get 
busy early and mature a good crop of 
fruit, while others dawdle along, mak¬ 
ing an enormous growth, but too lazy or 
too much in a hurry to produce fruit 
buds or fruit. If \ve w'ere selecting wood 
for grafting, we would, n't course, take 
scions from the working trees—not from 
the bluffers. In like manner, the best 
potato seed will come from these big hills 
which produce the large tubers. Even 
the small ones from such hills will fol¬ 
low the habit of the plant_ and, with full 
care, produce the same kind of a crop. 
The small seed from the other type of 
big hills will be likely to do as their 
parents did, and thus be caught un¬ 
finished by disease or frost. Then, in 
the same field, you will find many small, 
undersized plants. On digging them you 
will usually find a few undersized tubers 
and no marketable specimens. Plant 
those small tubers and you will, most 
likely, have plants just like the parents 
of these small potatoes. 
The Sjiall Potato. —Thus we come 
to about the most important seed ques¬ 
tion which is up to planters this year— 
shall we plant the small tubers? Now a 
small iiotato from one of those big 
prolific hills would look exactly like one 
of the same size from a drone or diseased 
hill. We could not tell them apart if 
they had been mixed together in a bin, 
yet* planted side by side one would most 
likely make a plant wdth half a dozen 
marketable potatoes, while the other 
would grow into a dwarf plant, with not 
one good tuber. There is the entire story 
about small potatoes. If -vve know where 
they come from and that their parents 
are right, it is safe to go ahead and 
plant them. If, however, they are all 
mixed up. with the parentage unknown, 
it is simply a gamble with a pretty sure 
thing that you will hold the low’ cards. 
Some one Avill say—why don’t you go 
ahead and tell how to plant potatoes? 
You might just about as well go ahead 
and plant chunks of dirt or hen manure 
as to put in the seed pieces which some 
people plant. The seed, like the sire, 
is half the crop, and when you plant 
tubers from dwarf or diseased plants. 
the crop is only one-third and the seed 
is responsible for two-thirds of that. But 
how are you going to know anything 
about it? The surest way is to save 
your own seed by digging the best hills 
in the field each year and saving these 
tubers for seed. After a few years of 
such work you will have much surer 
seed. Yoxi say Northern grown seed does 
better? It does when it is right, but 
selected seed on your own grounds will 
beat Northern seed taken at random 
from the bins. The next surest way is 
to buy seed from growers who have a 
certificate of purity from the United 
States government. Far better, try a 
smaller quantity of such seed at a high 
figure, than unselected seed for less. 
When I say “buy from reliable dealers,” 
you will ask •w'hat “reliable” means and 
how you know it when you see it. The 
best test ■w’ould be to consider how many 
years a man had been in business, and 
his general reputation among buyers. No 
man can continue to put out poor stocK 
year after year and “get away with it.” 
The sui-est way to ruin or mortgage 
your crop is to go down cellar and pick 
out the little tubers at random. 
Potato Scab. —You •«’ill find traces 
of this disease on many tuber.s. Probably 
everyone who has planted potatoes 
knows what it looks like. It is really a 
skin disease. I said that once in print, 
and a man w’rote in to say that it must 
be “catching.” He said his family had 
all broken out with something like “ring- 
Avorm,” and as their potatoes were 
scabby, he concluded they had “caught 
the .scab.” There was nothing to that 
theory, of course, but about all they had 
eaten with the potatoes was buckwheat 
flour and salt pork! Of coui’se they all 
“broke out.” I advised them to eat ap¬ 
ples and give the children sulphur and 
molasses, and put sulphur on the seed 
pieces of potato when planting. Some 
of these modern sanitarians will scowl 
at “sulphur and molasses,” but I know 
it helped me as a boy. The potato scab 
is not “catching,” and does not injure 
the tuber for eating purposes, but it does 
greatly injure the sale, and I think cuts 
down the yield. It is a germ disease 
and the best remedy is to kill the.se 
germs on the seed pieces without hurt¬ 
ing the buds or “eyes.” This can be done 
by soaking the seed tubers in a solution 
of one pint of formalin to .30 gallons 
of water. All sorts of Avays of doing 
this art described, but for a small plant¬ 
ing I w’ould work about as follows: Put 
a barrel containing the liquid under a 
tree or under a beam where a small 
tackle can be fastened. Throw water over 
the potatoes to rinse off the dirt. Then 
put them in a sack and lower them down 
into the barrel. Let them stay there 
about tw’o hours and then hook onto tho 
tackles and hoist the bag out of the wa¬ 
ter and let it drain back into the bar¬ 
rel. AVhen they are drained, take them 
out for drying. This kind of a beauty 
bath will surely help their complexion. 
In addition to this I would, Avheu cut¬ 
ting the tubers for .seed, dust pow'dered 
sulphur over them before planting. The 
solution of formalin will destroy most 
of the germs and the sulphur will pre¬ 
serve the seed pieces and give some pro¬ 
tection against scab germs which may be 
in the soil. 
The Bhd.s.—H ere again the potato is 
something like a tree, since its growth 
is made through buds. Many or most 
people call these buds “eyes.” Y’’ou may 
have heard of the faker -who advertised 
a sure preventive of drought—.$5 for the 
secret. It turned out to be the advice 
to plant onions with the potatoes, since 
the onions would make the potato eyes 
weep and thus water the crop. At any 
rate, you will not see much of any crop 
unless the potato eyes are treated right 
and given .a fair chance. As we are 
speaking of hand-planted potatoes, we 
■wmuld work about as follows: After 
the tubers have had their beauty bath 
I would cut them as close to planting 
as possible. Remember that the little 
sprout must “eat with its eyes” (like 
those Avho like the Ben Davis apple) 
and until it throws out true roots its 
food and drink must come from the seed 
piece. You might compare it Avith the 
plan of putting the baby into its crib 
Avith a full bottle of infant food and 
then going off on some trip. I am told 
that Avhen Robinson Crusoe Avas first 
printed it Avas folloAved by other books 
AA'hich Avere studies of lonely life on de¬ 
sert islands. One Avas the story of a 
white infant left on such an island Avith 
a full supply of food. He grew up, and 
folloAviug the instinct of his race, learned 
hoAV to talk and protect himself! The 
potato has the needed “instinct,” but 
unless its “eyes” are Avell protected and 
nourished in youth it AA’ill never see any 
visions of a sati.sfied mortgage. Thus 
the “seed” .should never dry out but be 
kept as fresh as possible. The sulphur 
Avill help care for this and the seed should 
be planted just after cutting. Our plan 
is to cut by hand into peach baskets 
AA'hich are set on papers. .Several times, 
while the basket is being filled, Ave scat¬ 
ter in a handful of sulphur and shake 
it down through. Whatever sifts through 
caji be .saved for another basket. The 
old American Indians Avere said to have 
perfect eyes. The children were trained 
from childhood to look hiio the sun, so 
that by degrees their eyes Avei'e made 
strong. I should give the potato ’’eyes” 
the same treatment by spreading the' tu¬ 
bers out in some slieltered place Avherc 
they Avould lie (Continued on page 348) 
Use Plenty 
OfWater 
Flour 
The strength of a flour is 
determined largely by the a- 
mount of water it will absorb. 
Bread made from a good 
strong flour will not dry out 
quickly. The extra amount 
of water absorbed in the mix¬ 
ing keeps the bread moist and 
fresh. 
If your bread dries out in 
no time, and you have to bake 
often and in small batches, it 
is probably because the flour 
you use lacks strength. 
Bread made from Pills- 
bury’s Best flour stays fresh a 
long time, because Pillsbury’s 
Best is a strong flour and 
absorbs lots of water. 
The Flour Question Settled 
‘‘Because 
Pillsbury’s Best” 
Send 10c for a copy of the famous Pillsbury Cook Book. Address Dept. 25 
Pillsbury Flour Mills Company, Minneapolis, Minn. 
