SIZE OF SUGAR BEETS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3618, 1 March 1906, Page 4

SIZE OF SUGAR BEETS.

The Small Kinds Are Richest lu Sacohftrlne Matter mud the Moat Profi ~./iie for the Grower, At a discussion upon sugar beets recently am, our - the members of a Wisconsin farmers’ institute i’rof. \V. A. Henry, dean of the Wisconsin agricultural college, said, concerning - the size of beets: ‘’The best- sugar beets weigh about two pounds each. Do not try to grow great, large heels, thinking-they are the best. Years ago when ,1 was looking up the beet sugar question in California J had a conversation with some of the officials of the Southern Pacific Hail road company in their office in San Francisco. J was urging upon them the importance of beet sugar prounction in California. Col. Crocker, the leader, showed much Indifference, saying that he had- lost $50,000 in trying to promote this very enterprise. I told him that that was not necessarily a reason why beet sugar production could not yet be profitable. Later on in our conversation, when talking about California’s wonderful productions, he said that in his experiments he had grown beets that weighed 20 or .00 pounds each. As soon as he told me this I replied: ’there, Col. Crocker, is one of the rea-

sons your factory failed. You thought large beets were good beets, when in truth they are poor beets, and helped wreck your factory. You should have tried to produce small beets, but many to the acre; and such, if grown properly, would have been rich in -sugar, and these would have brought you success instead of failure.’ ”