The other spot we wanted to visit on the coast of the North Cape area of Prince Edward Island (PEI) was a potato museum. You may think that this really isn’t an important enough vegetable to have a whole museum about it (that’s what we thought), but potatoes are such a major crop here on PEI that it really makes sense. Let’s see what it’s all about.
This “potato” is 14 feet tall (without the stand) and 7 feet in diameter—it’s huge!
Donna at the front desk of the museum was so helpful to talk with. This museum is a nonprofit organization. The cafe (closed for the season now) supposedly serves the best French fries ever. Thousands of people come through here during the summer!
See the covered plate on the bottom right of the picture? It’s potato fudge and was so delicious that we had a second piece on our way out of the museum. I’ll give you the recipe at the end of this post.
China and Russia are the 2 top potato growing countries in the world. Together they harvest almost 110 million tons, as much as the next 8 biggest producers. Canada harvests around 5 million tons, making it the 12th or 13th biggest producer. About 1/3 of Canada’s production comes from here.
The average potato harvest on just PEI is 1.5 million tons or 11 tons per PEI resident. Canada as a whole, harvests .2 tons per person. Belarus leads the world with an average of 1 ton per person.
Distribution of potatoes grown across Canada:
Canada’s harvest of potatoes in 1989 was 3,098,530 tons. You can see that the most potatoes are grown in PEI.
Now to the museum!
up the walkway to learn about all of the steps to getting potatoes to us
step 1 – cutting & planting
I think what we noticed first as we started walking through the steps of growing potatoes is that this process has its own terminology—just like every industry.
first term: “cutting”
cutting
A potato plant develops from a sprout that grows out of an “eye” (dimples on each potato that begin to sprout pinkish-white root buds) on the tuber (potato). Any small piece of potato with an eye—a set—is capable of sprouting into a plant.
First farmers used knives to cut out the eyes, but knives were capable of transmitting disease from 1 infected potato to another. Later, machines lessened the hard work of preparing the seed (piece of potato with an eye) by hand but could also transmit disease.
Seed potatoes are planted 7 to 10 centimeters below the surface of well-drained, finely tilled, and fertilized soil in rows 30 to 35 inches apart.
early planting and machinery
A plow loosens and aerates the soil The earliest ones cut V-shaped grooves. In the 11th century, the first moldboard plows were developed that lifted the soil and turned it over. A new version of these plows are still being used.
If the field is covered in sod, a knife could be attached to the shaft to make the fist cut. The plowshare then digs into the soil beneath the surface. The furrow slice then flows up the moldboard and is turned over.
“plowing” by hand
After clearing trees by burning them to make a field, the stumps are left standing about 2 feet high. The people then began planting their potato eyes. They scratch or rake a little bit of earth to 1 side, about 8 inches square. After raking a little of the ashes lying on the surface into this groove, they place 4 cuttings of seed potatoes into the square form and cover it up with earth until it resembles a small molehill.
This is the only hard labor used until the potatoes are ready for harvesting.
machinery
A single plow is on the right; the other plow is a gang plow.
This single plow can be pulled by a single horse, but a team worked better. It cuts 1 furrow at a time (slow but better than plowing by hand). The farmer guiding the plow had to walk about 8 miles to turnover a 1-acre field.
gang plow up close
This plow cuts 2 or more furrows at once. It was made by McCormick Deering and needed a team of 2 or 3 horses to pull it. If it had more heads, it would need a tractor to pull it, and these didn’t become common on PEI farms until the 1960s.
other plowing information and machinery
different types of plows could be used
spring tooth harrow has C-shaped teeth attached to a metal frame to mix the soil even finer and aerates it
why here?
PEI is an ideal location for seed potatoes because its isolation and climate helped limit pests and diseases affecting the harvest.
The size of the Island made it easier for scientists and inspectors to become familiar with all potato production areas.
mechanized cuttersfor cutting out the eyes
A piece of potato with 2 or 3 eyes will grow a new plant. These pieces are called “sets.” First the sets were cut by hand with a sharp knife.
cutting sets by hand
an early set cutter
Louis Aspinwall from Albany, New York, patented the following set cutter (see previous sign) in the 1890s. He patented dozens of inventions for digging, sorting, and planting potatoes starting in the 1860s.
Aspinwall set cutter would cut the pieces of potato with eyes
late, mechanized cutter
The potatoes would be put in the hopper at the top and then cut into pieces with the required eyes.
The pieces would go up the ramp with any dirt falling through and then into the bags at the other end.
what early potato planting by hand looks like
planting (and cutting) by hand
early planting machine
horse-drawn potato planter
step 2 – cultivating & hilling
next area in the museum
Cultivating: Spaces between rows of potato plants are cultivated to control weeds by using inter-row tillage equipment. Today’s cultivators are similar to the horse-drawn scufflers (you’ll soon see a picture of one) but are built to cultivate several rows at each pass.
Hilling is the final step in cultivation for smothering small weeds between potato rows and to heap a layer of loose soil along the row, allowing the tubers to grow freely and protecting them from frost and greening.
a 1-row scuffler for cultivating
Hillers roll the soil from between the rows and deposit it around the growing plants to make the hills where the potatoes grow.
horseshoe-style hiller
early fertilizing process
Like much in PEI’s history, harvesting mussel mud came out of a need. Early farmers needed a reliable fertilizer to breathe life back into their fields that were quickly depleted of their scarce nutrients. They found that lime-rich mud from the riverbeds and bays, with its deposits of oyster shells, was a great way to add nutrients back to the fields. Island farmers and entrepreneurs quickly developed ways to extract the mud and spread it on the fields—a new business!
mussel mud
At first farmers harvested mussel mud in the summer, which made it hard, hot work.
Harvesters set out in a canoe during high tide to a place known for having oysters and their shells. A 10-foot square area was dammed off to allow the mud to be dug from the bottom without mud rushing in. This mud was shoveled into the bottom of another canoe and brought back to shore. At low tide, wagons were brought to the canoes and mud transferred to them to be taken to the fields.
The hot weather, unbearable flies, and wet mud made this work difficult so not a lot of mud was harvested this way until new methods of mussel mud digging were developed in the mid-1800s.
newer methods of mussel mud harvesting
Someone in the late 1850s figured out that it would be easier to harvest the mussel mud in the winter. This new technique had the farmers going to the frozen rivers and estuaries to harvest the mud at the top of the ice. By 1867, nearly 300 diggers were operating across the province.
Farmers traveled to the nearest digger for mud to fuel their fields—just like they cut down trees to fuel the stoves that warmed their houses. From the late 1800s on, nearly every farmer used mussel mud. It became such a resource that land value was affected by how far the field was from access to mussel mud, just as it was affected by the land’s distance from a railway station.
Some mud diggers were constructed and used by a number of farms that shared both in the cost of running the digger and the benefits of the harvested mud. Usually though, the diggers were operated by farmers who worked whenever it was light and then selling the mud to other farmers who wanted it for their fields. Earliest sleight loads of mussel mud were purchased for little more than $.10/load. The cost went up, but rarely did a farmer ever have to pay more than $.60 or $.70 for 6 forks full of mud.
After the mud was purchased, it went directly to the farm and shoveled onto the fields. Farmers from a distance away would buy multiple loads and pile it on the shore until summer when the mud would be drier and more manageable.
overview of history of mussel mud in agriculture
Horse-powered machines were developed to make harvesting of mud as easy as possible. When cheap lime from the mainland became available and fear that mussel mud caused potatoes to scab, the practice of harvesting mussel mud died off in the 1940s, except for a brief revival in the late 1980s.
Using horses to harvest the mussel mud on top of the ice;, looks cold out there!
Mussel mud didn’t lead to large financial gains for the farmers or put PEI on the world stage, but it did personally affect the province and the people. The fields and crops improved, along with the camaraderie within the groups of people who worked together. Memories were made that families could look back to fondly, and it even was a measure of a man’s place in the community.
Many believed that 10-15 loads of mussel mud was needed per acre of land, while other felt it took 30-40 loads per acre to adequately fertilize the soil. It often took years to fertilize all the fields. The mud was said to have had such an effect on the soil that you could easily distinguish where in a field the mud had stopped and that in the fields that were mudded, the crops were several inches taller.
horses pulling loads of mud
a fork used for digging the mud during the winter
diggers during the late 1980s’ revival of digging mussel mud
step 3 – spraying & dusting
step 3 in the process
The potato plant can fall victim to numerous insects and disease organisms. One of the strategies is to use chemicals (insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides) to control pests and disease. These chemicals can be dusted (to distribute powdered chemicals) or sprayed (to scatter liquid chemicals) onto the plant leaves.
Colorado potato beetle
These nasty beetles came to eastern North America in the late 1870s.
In the 1880s, farmers discovered a poison called Paris Green that could kill potato beetles. This powder could be dissolved in water or dusted directly onto the leaves.
This hand duster, nicknamed a banjo sprayer, spread the powder more effectively.
The following homemade device was used to spread poison powder on potato plants. In 1930, Mr. Charles Oakes (the owner) remembers his father getting him and his brother up early in the morning to spread the powder on the plants when the dew was heavy.
The devise has a stick with a forked tree branch with an empty tin that’s been punched with holes to allow the powder to shake out. The bigger can held the powder supply to be used.
picking out potato bugs
If children weren’t available to pick out the potato bugs, a bug picker machine could fill in.
Belts and pulleys geared to the wheels turned the paddles, which swept bugs from the plant leaves into the tray below. Ingenious.
mechanized sprayer
Developed in the 1940s, the wheel mechanism powered a pump that built up pressure within the tank. When the nozzles were released, a fine spray came out. It was good for applying either Paris Green or bluestone, a compound used to combat leaf blight.
front of the mechanized sprayer
Back of the sprayer where the farmer sat. Since big tractors didn’t really come into use until the 1960s, horses or smaller tractors would have pulled this sprayer.
new technique for diseased plants – tuber unit planting
Introduced in the 1930s, this technique helped farmers deal with diseased plants. The seeds (eyes) from each potato were planted in sequence, making it easier to spot problems and remove the plants. Combining a set cutter and planter in 1 machine made the process much more efficient.
step 4 – harvesting
Like the other steps, tools for harvesting have gone from simple to complex over the years.
Potatoes are ready to harvest 2 weeks after the plant tops have died. Losing the protection of the foliage, the skin on the potatoes toughens, making them better resistant to skinning and bruising when being picked.
Today’s harvesting machines dig, elevate, sort, and move potatoes into containers are called potato harvesters. Chain conveyors to move potatoes from the field to the storage buildings provide the vibrating and raking action to separate the potatoes from the soil and tops.
diggersfor getting potatoes out of the ground
How a farmer would dig out his crop depended on the size of the land being harvested and his preference. Small crops could be dug out with a fork, hoe, or potato fork (a hoe-shaped fork). A single plow run down the middle of the drill (hill with the potatoes) could do the job as well.
shaker digger
shaker digger
It’s wide, pointed shear dug under the drill to raise the soil, tops, and potatoes onto a grade that shook up and down. As the soil shifted out, the potatoes would drop off the sides.
elevator digger
Here’s the later version of the shaker digger.
This digger digs up the potatoes and starts them up this ramp while the soil falls through the ramp. The bags at the other end.
rooter digger
The rooter worked like a hiller (that made the hills for the potatoes to grow in), only in reverse. A V-shaped shear split the drill (potato hill), exposing most of the potatoes.
back half of the rooter digger—sorry, I don’t have the front half (my oops)
beater diggers
Since the beater could throw potatoes a distance, farmers often hung canvas or burlap curtains on either side to deflect them to the ground.
Some of the earliest beater diggers may have been devised on PEI! Nicknames “whirligigs,” they were well suited to the Island’s light soil.
As the drive wheels turned, the beater demolished the drill (potato hill), throwing the potatoes to the surface. Spokes were often padded with burlap or rubber tubing to prevent crop damage.
today
harvesting today in a small field
grading potatoes
All potatoes have to be graded to remove damaged or diseased tubers, especially if the crop is going to market.
slat graders
Often these graders were home made and found in every root cellar in PEI for years. Small or split potatoes fall between the slats. Other damaged stock could be culled by hand and were often fed to the pigs.
slanted slat graders
bags at the end of the slat grader
hand cranked mechanical graders
Mechanical graders for sorting potatoes could be powered by a hand crank. Small ones (B size) fell between the chain and out a chute on the side.
This mechanical grader is powered by a hand crank (left side of picture). See the wide opening in the chain? That’s so really small potatoes can fall through.
So we’ve covered the 4 steps of growing potatoes, but we’re not done walking through this museum. The next post will cover the others displays that we found so interesting!
chocolate potato fudge
Here’s the recipe for potato fudge that I promised at the beginning of the post.
This fudge is really good and doesn’t taste like potatoes. I remember my dad making a chocolate cake with mashed potatoes in it. Wish I had that recipe!
