SEED POTATOES.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20363, 21 July 1934, Page 23 (Supplement)

SEED POTATOES.

SELECTION OF SEED. There is no question that there an foils per acre lost through careless handling. By careful selection of seed : disease can be more or less held in check. The small man who only plants a row or two in his garden does not consider that these things affect him; he buys what bit of seed he requires, and eats the whole crop. Under these circumstances it does not matter. The selection of good seed, however, does affect every row of potatoes planted. It is a common practice to pit or bag the potato crop, “seed and ware” together, and to keep using the best for eating, until nothing but the small and diseased tubers are left, and from these are selected the seed for planting. Now, the seed should bo the first consideration, for we can only expect that the potatoes will give the best crop when the best seed is planted. In other places the seed is left in heaps and bags until required; then the whole is • a matted mass of long white shoots and shrivelled tubers. A first-class crop cannot be obtained under these conditions, and one does not wonder why the potato crop so often fails, but why, under such treatment, it is possible to grow them at all.