POTATO PLANTING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 48, 25 September 1880, Page 4

POTATO PLANTING.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE .STAB.

Sir, — As the season for planting potatoes approaches, it may be of some service to add even a mite to the great treasury of knowledge. I have observed here that the practice of cutting the potato in sets for planting is universally adopted. Now, it is well known that by so doing potato disease in the Old Country was caused, from which it has never been wholly free since 1847. The following is from the Sydney Town and Country Journal, published some time ago, which I think every person growing potatoes to any extent should cut out and preserve. The climate and soil of New Zealand being peculiary adapted to the growth of the potato, all should be careful not to drive it away. Besides, it is to their intei-est to follow the plan described below, for by not doing bo they only save a few bushels of potatoes per acre, by using less seed: — "A French agricultural journal, called the Basse Cour, describes the result of some experiments in potato growing recently conducted by scientific men in Germany. The principal conclusions to which these savants have come seem to be two in number. The first of them is that the vigor of the potato plant is always in direct proportion to the weight of the tuber used for sets. The second, that there is a great variety in the productive power, not only of different tubers* but also of different eyes of the same potato. It is found that the eyes in the top of the potato produce a much more vigorous offspring than those in the lower part, and the consequence is that those agriculturists who cut their potatoes in half before planting them are not well advised in cutting them vertically, but should always divide them horizontally ; planting the upper half, and using the other as food for cattle. But the best plan of all -is to plant the tuber whole, cutting out,nevertheless, all the eyes, except those in the top part. Such being the principles laid down, we now come to the experiments upon which they are based. These were conducted in a garden soil, by Professor Gantz; the amount of crop pi'pduced by seveial different settings of potatoes being accurately estimated in statistical tables. It appeared that from tubers divided vertically, only five tons were produced per acre ; and from whole potatoes, seven and a half ions per acre. The third sort were potatoes bDrs2D»ialVy divided, vjhiefo are aeh down as haying proUvceb »me and three-quarter tons per acre. In this particular, however, some of" the other professors do not agree with Herr Gantz ; but maintain that, other things being equal, the whole potatoes will always produce more than halves, however cut. On the fourth result, however, all agree, and that is that the whole potatoes from which the lower eyes have been cut out, produce eleven and a half tons per acre, or more than double the result shown by the sets first mentioned." — I am, <ftc,

Potato.

[We shall be glad to hear from some of our farmers on different subjects. — Ed. Star,]