Shoalhaven Telegraph (NSW : 1881 - 1937), Wednesday 27 December 1905, page 2


Potato Seed Tests.

Mr Scarlett, the well knorwn Scottish potato seed grower, who has over 400 acres of potatoes in Midlothian and elsewhere, lias a testing ground at Chance- lot, Leith, where he has some sixty ?different varieties under test, his stocks -including practically all the best known of the older varieties, together ?with most of the newer varieties. By way of making his seed tests as useful .as possible, the has his test plots tripli

- cated in a double sense. Of each variety one section of sixteen roots is grown from and 'seconds,' one from full-sized uncut seed, one from full-sized cut tu? bers.3 Of each variety, also, one row is left without being earthed up, while another has been slightly earthed up. A paper on 'Potato Culture,' which ?' - y ;:v' ;V' ;- j;.'-1-'':

Mr Scarlett read before the Leith Horticultural Society, he intimated that, from faces which had come under his notice, he had come to greatly doubt whether it was desirable to earth up the crop at all, seeing that the potato was a sun plant, and that he would have this question fully tested by another yea.r. He has now had abundant proof of the fact that in the case of the early varieties of potatoes it is a great mistake to have them 'earthed up' too deep, and that they should either be left without earthing up, or otherwise the earthing up should be of the ligtitest possible character. Among all his early varieties he found only one exception to this rule, and that wa;w m the case of the Dalmeny early, which showed a marked upward habit of growth, so that the plots of this variety which were not earthed up showed a large proportion of 'greened' tubers, nut all the other early varieties showed 'he best results when they were either left without earthing up or otherwise had only a mere scratch of a furrow fiio rows.