Keeping Potatoes.

Advise me how to keep my potatoes.  What is the best way?  Would a dark room be suitable?  Some people are digging holes in the ground to put them in.

Potatoes, if properly matured and free from disease, will keep for a considerable time in dark rooms kept as cool as possible.  They must be kept away from the reach of the moth, which is parent to the worm producing long black strings inside of the potato.  If they are thoroughly covered with boards or sacking or straw, so as to keep the moth from reaching the potato, they may be held for a long time in the open air, and covering with earth, as your neighbors are doing, will be all right until the rains come and cause decay by making the soil too wet.  The main point is to keep the tubers as cool as possible and out of reach of the potato moth.

Potato Yield.

What is the yield per acre of potatoes on the best land around Stockton, Cal., where work is done properly; also what is the yield for potatoes along the coast?

The average yield of potatoes in California, taking the whole acreage and product as reported by the last United States census, is 147 bushels to the acre.  In Stockton district, on good new reclaimed land the yield has been reported all the way from 300 to 800 bushels per acre — the crop declining rapidly when continued on the same land.  One year’s crop in the Stockton district was estimated at 45,000 acres averaging 125 sacks per acre.  The coast yield would be more like the general average for the State as first given.

New Potatoes for Seed.

Can I plant American Wonder potatoes for the first crop, and let enough of them mature to use for seed for the second crop, to be planted the first or middle of July?

It is possible to use potatoes grown the same year as seed for the later crop, providing you let the potatoes mature first by the complete dying down of the vines, and second by digging the potatoes allow them to lie in the open air, with some protection against sun-burning, until the potatoes become somewhat greenish.  If this is the case the eyes will develop and seed will grow, while without such treatment you might be disappointed in their behavior.  Of course, the question still remains whether it would be desirable to do this or to plant some later variety earlier in the season when the growing conditions would be better.

Potato Growing.

In what locality are the best early potatoes grown in California?  Can they be raised on wheat lands without irrigation as an early crop?

Early potatoes are grown in regions of light frosts in all parts of the State — around the bay of San Francisco, on the mesas in southern California, and to some extent at slight elevations in the central part of the State.  The potato endures some frost, but one has, for an early crop, to guard against the locations subject to hard freezing.  Most of our potatoes are grown without irrigation because, on uplands, winter temperatures favor their growing during the rainy season.  The middle-season and late potatoes are grown on moist lowlands where irrigation is not necessary.  In proper situations, much of the land which is used for potatoes has at some time produced wheat or barley, corn or sorghum, and other field crops.