1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CUIvTURE. 



817 



" My orders just issued to all employees of this com- 

 pany forbid cigarette-smoking You, George Jay 

 Gould, are a director, and therefore an employee, for 

 you get $10 for every directors' meeting that you at- 

 tend. Now, don't you ever come around this ofEce 

 smoking again ! " 



That's business from all points of view. 



NOTES or TRAVLI. 



I BY A. I. ROOT. 



^=^^^^lfJT^:;^^fe^S"3^^^^ 



Friend Hilbert has just purchased aRobbins 

 potato-planter — that is, his potatoes were 

 planted with it this season. I expressed some 

 surprise to know that it was the only potato- 

 planter anywhere in that region ; but the an- 

 swer given me was a still greater surprise. 



THE WAY THEY MARK OUT AND PLANT PO- 

 TATOES IN THE GRAND TRAVERSE RE- 

 GION. 



I supposed the marking was, of course, done 

 with a horse. Not so. In this great potato- 

 growing country the marking is done as it has 

 been done for years, by dragging a piece of 

 log-chain where the mark is wanted — not one 

 piece at a time, mind you, but three, five, or 

 seven pieces. Take a piece of heavy log- 

 chain with about a dozen links. Tie this with 

 a light rope or strong cord to a pole. The 

 cord should be four or five feet long. Now 

 have as many of these cords and chains at- 

 tached to the pole at the right distance as you 

 can handle. One man alone could make two 

 marks, and perhaps three. Two men will 

 make five or six, or even seven. When you 

 commence, one of the men takes one end of 

 the pole and goes straight toward a stake at 

 the opposite side of the field. After this, one 

 man walks in the mark made by the outer 

 chain. Of course, it might depend somewhat 

 on how many horses you had and how many 

 men or boys there were on the farm. One 

 thing I like about it is that, when your ground 

 is worked up nice and mellow for potatoes, 

 you do not tramp it up with a team of big 

 heavy horses, or, rather, trampitdown solid.* 

 On the island of Bermuda they wanted their 

 potato ground so that a man could thrust his 

 arm in it up to his elbow. Well, with hand- 

 marking you can keep it light and soft. I be- 

 lieve they usually mark their ground both 

 ways 2^ to 3 feet apart. By shoving the 

 strings along the pole that holds the chains 

 you can mark it both ways, and have them 3 

 feet by 18 inches or 3 feet by 15 inches. Po- 

 tatoes that are liable to grow foo large we pre- 

 fer to have not more than 15 inches apart. 

 Now for the planting. 



At Traverse City there is a place where they 

 manufacture a little hand potato-planter. I 

 am going to give you a cut of it later on. 



* You may remember T. B. Terry says in his potato- 

 book that when he has got his ground up nice and 

 mellow he would like a balloon or some similar ar- 

 rangement to pull his tools over the ground in order 

 that he might avoid tramping it down solid again 

 with the horses' feet. Potatoes, to be handsome, must 

 have a soil above (and below) them so loose and yield- 

 ing that they can swell out in all directions without 

 being cramped into ungainly shapes. 



This potato-planter is made of metal, and 

 does not weigh more than a pound or two. 

 It has a wooden handle. The operator has a 

 bag of potatoes swung around his shoulders. 

 He picks the pieces of potato from the bag 

 with his left hand, brings the planter up with 

 his right hand until his left hand can drop the 

 piece in the cavity. Then as he puts it down 

 where the marks cross each other, he sets his 

 foot on it, to get it down to the required depth. 

 In this way one man will plant an acre easily, 

 and some men — yes, and some boys — have 

 planted two acres in a day. It is hard work, 

 though . To save lugging a good many pounds 

 of potatoes they are cut and located at each 

 end of the field ; but if it is a long one, in the 

 middle also, or oftener still. This way of 

 planting and this way of marking, I can im- 

 agine, is specially adapted to fields where the 

 stumps are not all out of the way. A man 

 can get over a stump, or get around it, and 

 still keep his marker going in a straight line 

 in a way that a horse could not or would not ; 

 and it just now strikes me this will be a grand 

 invention (for I call it an invention) for those 

 who have small pieces of land and use hand 

 cultivators. By the way, hand cultivators and 

 all hand tools will work just beautifully in 

 that soft, pliable, rich sandy Michigan loam. 

 The operator can very quickly fix a pole with 

 some light chains to mark out an acre, half an 

 acre, or even a village lot, and do it handsome- 

 ly and accurately. Then with this little plant- 

 er he can plant it and cultivate it with the lit- 

 tle garden plow or weeder. Friend Hilbert 

 has a weeder, but somehow or other he does 

 not take kindly to it. He prefers his drags 

 and smoothing-harrows that he uses after the 

 same fashion he did before weeders came out. 

 Now, may be some one of our various agri- 

 cultural papers has published accounts of 

 marking land by dragging a piece of chain, 

 but I have never seen it or heard of it, and 

 yet I have been reading pretty much all the 

 agricultural papers published in the United 

 States, more or less, for years past. If I am 

 making a mistake, will somebody tell me 

 where such an arrangement has been describ- 

 ed in print? I know there has been a hand 

 potato-planter carried around, and I have 

 heard the statement that it would enable a 

 man to plant an acre a day or more ; but the 

 planter carried around by agents was a heavy 

 and clumsy affair, and no good either. Mr. 

 Hilbert, as well as myself, was swindled into 

 bttying one ; and neither he nor his boys 

 could use it after they got it. It was a tin- 

 tube arrangement. You do not want any tube 

 at all. This method of marking has been in 

 use ever since the people tip there can remem- 

 ber, yet nothing is said about it in our books 

 and papers. I do not know that I can blame 

 some of the old veteran potato growers of the 

 Traverse region for being skeptical in regard 

 to " book farming." Friend Hilbert said he 

 had noticed year after year the arrangements 

 with pins or runners on them, to be drawn 

 by a horse, pictured every spring in our farm 

 papers ; but he could not for the life of him 

 see what anybody wanted of such a rigging. 

 I do not see why the above will not answer for 



