Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 179, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1918 — Potato Pens Prove Dismal Failure—Did Not Produce Their Seed, Christie Says [ARTICLE]

Potato Pens Prove Dismal Failure—Did Not Produce Their Seed, Christie Says

Last year people all over the country were building potato “pens.” Somebody, somewhere, it was said, had raised enough potatoes to last an ordinary family a whole year in an openwork box eight feet square. The box was filled with soil and seed potatoes in the spring, and that was all there was to it The vines grew out through the cracks all around, and the bin was full of good tubers in the fall. Fine business it was. The only trouble with this grand scheme was that it didn’t work. Professor Christie of Purdue university says that in Indiana most of these skyscraper potato gardeners didn’t get back their seed. Of 40 pens tried in Indianapolis, according to City Garden Supervisor Osborne, not one succeeded. Experiments by the United States department of agriculture were equally disappointing. In a potato pen at Washington 20 pounds of seed were planted and eight pounds of potatoes were harvested. The “barrel” plan was just as bad. The crop from two barrels weighed less than two pounds. It doesn’t pay to be a mossback, of course, but it does pay to stick to approved methods of farming.—Farm Life.