The Florida Agriculturist

Second Crop Potatoes.

Professor Massey sees a possible bonanza for the southern farmers in growing second crop potatoes, and among other demands for them he mentions the northern markets for old potatoes in the spring, as they would be unsprouted and superior to green new ones. There might be a greater demand for them for seed, as truck farmers find them earlier than northern seed. Louisville merchants now furnish some Ohio gardeners with second crop seed, and while it is less productive than home grown stock, the high prices of the first ten days of the new potato season make it a paying business to use the southern seed, according to a correspondent of The Rural New Yorker, who writes further as follows:

This seed costs too much. It is brought North in small lots, and every middleman adds very substantially to the charge. If southern growers would ship their product North in car lots, just as we ship ours to the southern markets in the fall and winter, the price and convenience of getting the seeds would induce northern truck farmers to give them a wide trial. A leading truck farmer in our market orders them directly from the south every spring, paying a round price, but he prefers to do this rather than plant home seed and get a later crop. It pays us in southern Ohio to go North for the seeds for the main crop of potatoes, as they are more vigorous growers, and to the South for seeds for early crops, but half the profits from this exchange are reaped by railway companies. They should have all they earn, but when they take all the traffic will bear it prevents such an exchange of products between the farmers of this broad country as would be advantageous to all.