A STUDY OF FACTORS INFLUENCING THE YIFLD OF POTATOES 1265 



maturity in order to reap the benefit of the early-market prices. Further- 

 more, growers of early varieties in Nassau County harvest early in order 

 to be able to follow the potato crop with a crop of vegetables or root crops 

 for the fall market. A harvest of Cobbler potatoes in Nassau County, 

 in the middle of July, is shown in figure 130 (page 1152). It can be noted 

 that the foliage, as separated from the tubers, is not yet mature. On the 

 following day this same field was ridged for turnip planting. 



As is evident from table 90, the Long Island crop is seldom affected by 

 a killing fall frost. The Long Island growers aim to market their crop 

 as soon after maturity as is possible, in order to supply the New York 

 City market before the earliest crop of other sections of the State is ready 

 to harvest. For the years concerned in this study, the crop in the other 

 three regions was harvested at an average date earlier than the average 

 date of the first fall frost because of the severe blight epidemic of Steuben 

 County, the early and severe frost in Monroe County, and the early 

 frost in Franklin and Clinton Counties. Partly because of the tempering 

 influence of Lake Ontario, the average date of harvest and the average 

 date of the first fall frost in Monroe County are considerably later than 

 for the other regions. Similarly, because of the influence of Lake Cham- 

 plain, the growers located around Peru, in Clinton County, harvested their 

 1913 crop approximately two weeks later than did other growers in the 

 county. 



METHOD OF HARVESTING IN THE FOUR REGIONS SURVEYED 



The factors that ordinarily determine whether potatoes shall be dug 

 by hand or by machine are, size of acreage, available labor supply, and soil 

 conditions affecting the efficiency of machine diggers. The author (Har- 

 denburg, 1915 a) found, for Steuben County in 1912, that when the 

 potato acreage per farm was at least 5, the saving in labor cost by machine 

 digging more than outweighed the interest, depreciation, and repair costs 

 of digging by this method. Since the minimum acreage of potatoes per 

 farm recorded in these studies was 5, the factor of economy in the use of 

 machines for digging is probably of no concern in any of the other three 

 regions. There are many farms in Steuben County with fields so steep 

 as to limit the use of heavy elevator diggers. In 1912 the writer (Harden- 

 burg, 1915 a) found the average slope of potato fields dug by hand to be 

 somewhat steeper than that of machine-dug fields. A special type of 

 digger, known as the Boss, or Keeler, which removes the tubers by a rotating 

 reel, has been adapted to the hilly sections of Steuben County because of 

 ite exceptionally light draft and its adaptation to slopes too steep for elevator 

 diggers. A study of the influence of slope of field on the type of digger 

 used in 1912 in Steuben County rqvealed the fact that the fields dug with 

 the reel digger had a higher average slope than those dug with the elevator 

 type (Hardenburg, 1915 a). 



