102 FIELD AND GARDEN PRODUCTS 



probably to the lighter rainfall. In certain sections near the Gulf, 

 two seed crops in a season may be secured by growing in rows and 

 planting the first very early. 



Hand Picking. The method of gathering seed by hand is the 

 only one practicable where the peas are planted in corn, which is 

 a very common practice throughout the South. The cowpea seeds 

 are planted at the last cultivation of the corn and are nearly always 

 ripe before frost. The vines climb the corn stalks, so most of the 

 pods are well above ground, which greatly facilitates gathering 

 them. They are picked by hand into bags, and later flailed or run 

 through a pod huller. The cost of hand picking ranges from 40 

 to 75 cents a hundred pounds of pods, or the picker is given one- 

 third to one-half of the total quantity gathered. This method of 

 harvesting naturally makes the price of seed high. Fields grown 

 to cowpeas alone for seed production are often hand picked. The 

 yield of seed in such cases is as a rule much larger, and a larger 

 number of pods can be picked in a day than when grown w 7 ith corn. 

 The Blackeye and similar varieties grown for table use are usually 

 picked by hand. 



Machine Picking. The scarcity of seed and the difficulty of 

 securing labor have resulted in the invention of several so-called 

 pea pickers. These machines are intended to gather the pods 

 from the vines in the field. The peas must be planted in rows 

 for the most successful operation of a pea picker, and the entire 

 plant must be ripe and dry before the machine will do satisfactory 

 work. Two of these pickers are constructed on much the same 

 principle, that of a winged drum revolving rapidly over a station- 

 ary moderately sharp edge. The pods are thus knocked back upon 

 a platform and then elevated into a receiving box or bag. A third 

 machine differs from the foregoing in that the picking apparatus 

 is very much in the nature of a flailing operation, the cylinder con- 

 sisting of four arms made up of pieces of gas pipe. This revolves 

 rapidly and knocks the pods back into the gathering box. A fourth 

 machine is a harvester and thrasher combined. In this, the vines 

 are cut with an ordinary mowing arrangement and passed directly 

 to the thrashing part of the machine, which is essentially the same 

 as that of any thrasher. This last-mentioned machine is very sat- 

 isfactory for harvesting perfectly ripe peas, since it very nearly 

 completes the operation. For harvesting varieties grown for table 

 use, such as the Blackeye, the Lady, and other white peas, it 

 may find considerable demand. 



Cowpeas for seed production are quite satisfactorily harvested 

 with a mower. A bunching attachment has been used with excel- 

 lent results. This gets the vines out of the way of the team, thus 

 avoiding considerable loss of peas through trampling and crushing 

 by the mower wheels. It also leaves the vines in a more desirable 

 shape for curing, they being rolled into small windrows. The self- 

 rake reaper is a very satisfactory machine for mowing cowpeas for 

 seed, accomplishing even better results than the buncher on a mower, 



