ROOT CROPS. 243 



more than four inches deep. I prefer to plow two or throe 

 weeks before ridging, as on most soils the land will work finer 

 after having been settled by rains. 



When the plants are ready to set, take advantage of the 

 first day when the land is in just the right condition, after a 

 rain, to work it fine with the cultivator and plank drag, pulver- 

 izing it thoroughly. Then throw up in ridges with the small 

 one-horse plow. The ridges should be three feet apart from 

 center to center, and thrown up so as to be sharp, not flat, 

 on top. A narrow ridge of earth will be left between the 

 rows, which will be needed for dressing up the hills as they 

 are cultivated. Most growers plant on these ridges, setting the 

 plants about fifteen inches apart; but I find on my soil that it 

 pays to make hills. The extra expense will be small, as two 

 hands will hill an acre a day if the soil is mellow, as it ought 

 to be. The advantages of small hills over ridges are that they 

 warm through more readily and do not become packed so hard, 

 and when the potatoes begin to grow in the hill, they crack and 

 loosen it, and grow larger than they would do in a ridge. The 

 advantage of shallow plowing is that the potatoes soon reach 

 the hard earth, and are checked in their downward growth, and 

 are made short and thick. 



We make the rows three feet apart and the hills thirty 

 inches, and this gives 5,808 hills to the acre, and a pound of 

 potatoes to the hill, makes a yield of a fraction over one hundred 

 and sixteen bushels to the acre. Mr. Samuel Silvers, of Butler 

 County, Ohio, has made sweet potatoes his leading crop for 

 many years, and has followed the plan of shallow plowing, so as 

 to have hard earth under small ridges, and he has been remark- 

 ably successful. I have a record of his crop for seven years, 

 and find that the yield per acre increased largely as he learned 

 how to manage the crop. His first crop averaged one hundred 

 and twenty-five bushels per acre, and the last of the seven con- 

 secutive crops two hundred and sixty-two bushels, and the aver- 

 age for the entire period is one hundred and ninety-eight bushels 

 per acre. Mr. Silvers grew during these years eight or ten 

 acres annually. Whether hills or ridges are made, they should 



