70 SUGAR-BEET SEED 



the plants appear above the ground and show their 

 third leaf, all superfluous plants must be pulled up, 

 care being exercised that the remaining plants be 

 injured as little as possible. At best, the shock is 

 so severe that the remaining plants wither and lie 

 flat on the ground for several hours after being thinned. 

 In addition to the injury to the plants, thinning is a 

 slow, expensive, back-aching task which must be done 

 by hand. 



Several years ago it was proposed to plant the 

 beet-balls in paper tubes in a seed-bed, thin them while 

 the tubes still were on trays, convey the trays to the 

 field and plant the tubes, much as tobacco plants 

 are planted. Because of the attendant expense, this 

 method never passed the experimental stage. 



Then a machine was invented which twisted up 

 beet-balls, one in a place, at given distances within 

 a continuous narrow roll of paper, which could be 

 unwound from a field implement which made a trench, 

 laid the paper roll and covered it with earth as the 

 machine was drawn across the field. But the inventor 

 overlooked the fact that each beet-ball contained 

 several germs, hence his proposed method did not 

 obviate the necessity of thinning on hands and knees. 



About the same time, a German seed grower tried 



