46 POTATO CULTUEE. 



CHAPTER VI. 



How to Make the Drills and Fill Them. 



The ordinary markers do not make a mark deep enough 

 for potatoes, if nearly level cultui e is practiced. They would 

 do better for corn. A light one-horse plow does very well ; 

 and by running it twice in a row, as I have known some 

 good farmers to do, a very fair drill can be made ; but they 

 can hardly be made straight enough so that the cultivating 

 can be done to the best advantage ; and then it is too slow 

 for this fast age, particularly if one raises very many acres. 



Feeling the great need of a marker that would make nice 

 straight drills four or five inches deep, fast, and leave the 

 earth so the drills could be rapidly filled by horse-power, 

 and finding nothing of the kind in the market, the writer, 

 some years before the planter was offered to the public, 

 made such a tool for his own use. It gives excellent satis- 

 faction, and he believes that, by its use, he can put in pota- 

 toes on his farm in the best known manner. The planter 

 will be spoken of in the following chapter. 



The marker consists of two light plows, one right hand 

 and one left, with the mold-boards toward each other, at- 

 tached beneath the axle of a two-horse sulky, so that they 

 can be adjusted at pleasure, and can be lifted out of the 

 ground, and fastened up at the end of the rows while turn- 

 ing around. Fig. 1 shows a top view of the main frame. A 

 is the pole ; B the axle ; C a cross piece ; E the doubletree ; 

 D, D, two pieces of wood of the same thickness sidewise as 

 the plow-beams, bolted under the axle and cross-piece, and 

 directly over the plow-beams. The pole is also bolted under 

 the axle and cross-piece, and is braced as shown in the cut. 

 F, F, are the draft-irons which run under C. One of them 

 is shown more fully in Fig. 5. The whiffletree is put on the 



