128 POTATO CULTURE. 



now if we dig as soon as ripe, and store temporarily until 

 October, and then sort over and measure or weigh out a 

 hundred bushels, there will be no practical loss in shrinkage 

 on them until they begin to sprout in the spring. This in 

 our cellar, which is kept cold, or in the pile in the field where 

 seed are kept. 



How shall we Dig? 



This depends on how many you have to dig, and the con- 

 ditions. There are a great many cheap diggers on the mar- 

 ket, sold all along from $10 to $50 or more. They do a sort 

 of half-way work. With conditions right, some do fairly 

 well. The great trouble is, as a rule, they do not take the 

 potatoes all out clean, and leave them on top ready to pick 

 up. You can pick up what you can find, plow around in the 

 soil with your fingers not a little, and then, when you get 

 through, harrow the field and pick up some more ; and then 

 if vou should plow it you would get another crop. This is a 

 little hard on this class of diggers, but it is about the truth. 

 However, circumstances make some difference. With a 

 clean field and high hills, which we don't want, many of 

 these cheap diggers would do pretty well, particularly if the 

 soil were mellow ; but not one will do perfect work, so far as 

 I have seen that is, take every single tuber out and lay it on 

 the surface handy to pick up, and clear from soil. Few men 

 have tried as many diggers as the writer. Day after day 

 have I bothered over them, often with the manufacturer 

 here in person, and that when I had a good digger in the 

 field ; but I have been anxious to find a good cheap digger 

 that I could recommend to small growers. I am through 

 trying. If a small grower myself, I would dig by hand with 

 the four-tined fork. An expert can dig half an acre in ten 

 hours, where the crop is kept clean and the soil is mellow. 

 I give you a picture of such a fork in the hands of a young 

 man who once worked for me some five years. He dug my 

 crop in 1883, at a cost to me of just about one cent a bushel 



