ROOT CROPS. 235 



cost of hand digging will not exceed three cents a bushel, as a 

 hand can dig forty bushels or more a day, and the potatoes will 

 be left in more convenient shape for picking up and sorting than 

 if dug by a horse machine. 



I have never found an implement for hand digging that was 

 so satisfactory as the potato hook. The form is shown in the 

 cut. It should be of the best steel, and 

 strong enough both in prongs and handle 

 so that you can strike a hard blow to 

 settle it into the ground without fear of 

 breaking it, and without causing it to 

 spring. I can dig with this implement, 

 with much less weariness or strain of 



muscle than with the fork-spade. In digging with it, you strike 

 it into the ground just beyond the hill, so as to clear the pota- 

 toes, and then lifting the handle gives a leverage which lifts the 

 potatoes and loosens the hill. Then a dragging stroke or two 

 rakes out the potatoes. 



I prefer always to sort the potatoes as I pick them up. 

 First, take such as are fine, for market do n't try to smuggle 

 in a few small ones, or those which have had a fork-tine through 

 them; you will be certain to lose more than you will make by 

 it. Put only good-sized, smooth tubers in the lot which is de- 

 signed for market or home use. From those left, select for 

 your seed smooth, good-shaped tubers, about the size of a hen's 

 egg. Let the remainder go for stock food. Much time will be 

 saved by doing the sorting as you pick up the potatoes. It 

 takes but little longer to pick them up in this way than to pick 

 all up together, and sorting after gathering is a tedious job. 



I think considerable time and stooping is saved by throwing 

 the small potatoes in piles as you pick up the large ones, as 

 this will save going over all the ground again. You can throw 

 six or eight feet ahead and back, and the contents of three rows 

 on the middle one, so as to leave all the small potatoes from 

 half a square rod in a pile. 



The best way to handle potatoes is in common grain sacks, 

 with only a bushel in a sack. I think this filling the sacks only 



