Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 2, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1858 — Seed Potatoes. [ARTICLE]

Seed Potatoes.

Sir: You publish the statement of a correspondent, that cutting seed potatoes is the principal cause of the degeneracy and decay of the plant, and solicit facts which tend either to confirm or disprove this theory. I was born in the province of Nova Scotia, where my father now resides, and frequently visit my friends there, and have noticed particularly the method of culture and the products of the potato crop—a statement of which will have a direct bearing on the point in question. The almost universal practice is to cut the potato into several pieces, giving one or two eyes to a hill. One of the best farmers in the province told me that a few years ago, in a time of scarcity, he bought three bushels of small potatoes with which he planted an acre of gound. The yield from the three bushels was about three hundred bushels of large potatoes. The average amount of seed is five bushels to the acre, while in this country it is often fifteen or twenty bushels. The practice of cutting seed potatoes is universal in the province, and the degeneracy and tot is leas than in this country .—New York Tribune.