OCR Text |
Show Farmers Learn Much About Seed Potatoes Last Year Farmers in Sanpete county learned a great deal about seed potatoes last year. Many farmers farm-ers and victory garden raisers decided de-cided to raise potatoes and they also' decided at once that the potatoes they were eating looked too good to eat and consequently they planted them instead of getting get-ting certified seed. The result was, as expressed in the words of one fellow, who tried to make this saving. "I didnt get my seed back. I can't understand it?" he continued, con-tinued, "my seed looked good, ii was raised from certified seed two years ago and they were nice and smooth. They came up good and looked good for a while and then all at once they started to turn brown and die." Potatoes are very susceptible to disease, and what was good seed two years ago may not be good seed now. The worst diseases dis-eases of potatoes are not visible in the tuber itself and even the expert cannot tell by "looks of potatoes" whether it is free from some of these worsted diseases, it is when the potato is growing that these diseases show by certain cer-tain "vine" and "leaving" characteristics char-acteristics and when it does show j up the vine should be pulled up and removed from the field. The i certified potato grower is re- quired to do this very thing. He periodically ' removes from the field all disease infected vines and tubers. His field is given several rigid field inspections by an expert during the growing season. They also are given a digging inspection and if they pass the requirements of each they are. then eligible for taggin' and sealing as certified seed which is the purchasers assurance assur-ance that he is getting seed that is certified to be good. Farmers should insist on seed being tagged tag-ged and sealed. It is the only way of being sure. Many a person per-son has been sold diseased potatoes pota-toes as good seed and accepted it as such because the other fellow fel-low said so. There is only one way of being sure, insist on it jeing tagged and sealed. i Now is the time for every farmer farm-er and garden raiser to locate and order his seed potatoes. It is customery among potato growers grow-ers to only recognize orders which have been accompanied by a cash deposit. Persons who wish help to locate lo-cate certified seed may receive some from the County Crop Im- : provement Committee at Mount Pleasant, Utah, or the county agent at Manti. |