To know exactly what kind of plant our potato comes from

To know exactly what kind of plant our potato comes from

To know exactly what kind of plant our potato comes from

Since the eye is a bud and our potato plant for next year is to develop from this bud, it is of much importance, as we have seen, to know exactly what kind of plant our potato comes from. If the potato is taken from a small plant that had but a few poor potatoes in the hill, we may expect the bud to produce a similar plant and a correspondingly poor crop. We must see to it, then, that our seed potatoes are drawn from vines that were good producers, because new potato plants are like the plants from which they were grown. Of course when our potatoes are in the bin we cannot tell from what kind of plants they came. We must therefore select our seed potatoes in the field. Seed potatoes should always be selected from those hills that produce most bountifully. Be assured that the increased yield will richly repay this care in selecting. It matters not so much whether the seed potato be large or small; it must, however, come from a hill bearing a large yield of fine potatoes.

Fig. 46.
Begonia-Leaf Cutting