DIGGING POTATOES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 March 1941, Page 9

DIGGING POTATOES

SOME USEFUL HINTS. Potatoes can be dug as soon as the skin is firm, but unless the ground they are occupying Is required for ether crops, it is better to leave them until the tops ripen off completely, that is, unless we get heavy rains, which would start second growth or the disease should appear. As digging proceeds the sets required for next season’s planting should be selected fromthe most prolific plants. These should be medium-sized tubers, clean and without blemish, and the correct, shape and characteristics of the variety. Tubers will do which have been partly exposed to the light and are consequently partly greened. The selected sets are exposed to light and air and allowed to become green before they are stored away for the winter in a cool, airy frost-proof place. The table tubers, if there are not a great many, can be put into sacks or boxes and stored away in a cool dark cellar or shed, but on no account should they be exposed to the light or they will green and become useless for food. Where there is a considerable crop, that is sufficient to provide for the winter, it is better to store them in a clamp or pit. This is made up in a well-drained position behind a hedge or fence or where it would not be in the way of winter digging. The tubers are stacked up neatly in a pyramid, the sides being as steep as the tubers will lie, and they are then thatched with about four inches of straw or long grass, a few spadefuls of earth being thrown over them to. keep the covering in place. Allow a few days for the tubers to sweat, and then cover with six inches of soil dug from round the base of the clamp, beat the surface firm and smooth to enable the heavy rain to run off. To provide ventilation, a small bunch of twisted straw or hay is put in the top.