POTATOES UNDER STRAW.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1490, 12 July 1912, Page 8

POTATOES UNDER STRAW.

A SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENT. Details of au 'interesting experiment in growing potatoes under straw conies from Kotoruii. The ."experimenter. Major Mair, of lierewhakaitu, deals with the matter as follows in a Jotter to an' exchange:— '"In the winter, of'l9ll I, read something about growing jiotaloes under straw, nna decided to try the experiment in u very small way. I dug spado deep a plot oi ground four feet square, which had been broken up tho.preyjous'season, and mixed with it live or six shovds of inferior stable manure. For seed I took one. large lip-to-Dato tuber, with six strong spurlike shoots, and cut it into four pieces; these I planted two inches deep within tho square, two feet apart. Then I covered the whole space with from three to four inches of oat straw, through which I sprinkled two double handfuls of special potato manure. •• Then i covered the lot with an inch of soil, to prevent the straw from blowing away. This was on October 30._ By the middle of December the'whole plot was over knee-deep in a luxurious mass of haulms, many of them an inch in thickness. A friend suggested that the crop would be 'nil top,' and about January 21.1. trimmed the-haulms on. one set by cutting away about a third of the growth. On Starch 21 I took up the crop. A'o. 1 set produced IS.-tiiliofs, all lit for the table, .weighing'lMb.; No. 2, 22 tubers (1 being small); weighing I lib.; No. H, 17 tubers, all tit for use, weighing 81b.; No. •1 (the one I hat 1 had trimmed), 1)2 tubers (S of them being small), weighing (Jib, " ! '"l!he total number of lubers was flfi, which, weighed 3RII>. 1 think this works out at over 4li lons tn the acre. The soil tlii 1 potatoes were grown in was erupted Tara.wera clay, and the space would have carried more potatoes, for; contrary fo my expectations, Ihe tubers, instead of bein» distributed. through the straw, were in each case thickly clustered round each set. Half n (hzen or more- of them weighed over lib. a-piece. Of course, it. was impossible to earth them up' , Another time I should use niflro straw." ,