我的英语学习笔记:手把手教你如何种土豆.

Do you know how potatoes are actually planted?

If you just throw a whole potato into a soil, you might end up harvesting nothing.

It sounds crazy, but farmers never do it that way.

They first cut one potato into several pieces. Each piece keeps only one or two eyes.

It may look like waste, but this step directly determines your final yield.

So why do they have to cut it.Because potatoes have what's called epical dominance.

If you plant the whole potato , all the eyes will start competing for nutrients at the same time.

That's why when you plant it whole,the potatoes grow unevenly above ground and the potatoes  underground end up small and weak.

A single seed potato usually has many eyes. Once you cut it, each piece can sprout  on it own,and the nutrients are more concentrated.The plants grow more evenly and the yield is actually higher.

More importantly, with the same amount of potatoes cutting them means you can grow many more plants.

But here's the step where most people mess up.

Freshly cut potatoes should never go straight into the soil. You need to let them sit for one to two days.So the cut surface can dry and form a protective layer.

Otherwise, once you get into the soil, they can easily rot or get infected by disease.

If you have a backyard or just want to plant a few rows yourself, this method works just as well.

It saves seed potatoes and helps you grow more of them. So here's a question, would you try this in your own garden?

epical dominance  顶端优势(顶芽抑制侧芽的生长)

unevenly 不均匀的

sprout  发芽