42 POTATO CULTURE. 



for not doing so are founded on simple common sense, as 

 well as long practical experience ? 



CHAPTER V. 



Shall we Plant in Hills or Drills? 



When the country was new and land cheap and rough, and 

 tools of the poorest kind, and farmers generally raised only 

 about what potatoes they wanted for their own use, hill cul- 

 ture was well enough ; but now there are many reasons why 

 the farmer who wishes to do the best he can should give up 

 the hill planting for good, and put in his crop in drills. It 

 requires less hand work to keep the crop clean if you can 

 work it both ways, is the usual reason given for planting in 

 hills. That was all very true a few years ago ; but now we 

 have so much better tools that it is possible to put in the 

 crop in drills, and keep it quite clean without any hand 

 work or hoeing at all, as a rule. The main argument, there- 

 fore, is easily disposed of. Another argument is, that it is 

 more work to drop the seed (there are more pieces to be 

 dropped) and more work to dig the crop. Yes, and it is 

 more work to mark out both ways than one way. However, 

 we have a machine to do the dropping now that never gets 

 the backache. It would just as soon drop three pieces a foot 

 apart as one piece every three feet. If the digging is done 

 by any of the patent diggers, the same rule holds good of 

 them. I asked a man once who had dug many thousands of 

 bushels with a fork, in my fields, where they were drilled, 

 whether it was any more work to dig an acre of my drilled 

 potatoes than it was to dig an acre where they were planted 

 in hills. He said it was not, for him. Now, he had got 

 the hang of it. In the drills he could throw out all the 

 tubers under one plant by a single motion of the fork, 

 usually, and three motions or movements would throw out 



