TILLAGE, PLANTING, AND CULTIVATION 



33 7 



planters are on the market, such as the Moline Champion, 

 Deere & Mansur Improved, Black Hawk, Rock Island, 

 Farmers' Friend, Hoosier, Bradley, and Planet Junior. The 

 simpler the mechanism the better, where farm labour is in- 

 efficient and unskilled. 



Some of these machines are furnished with centre-hole 

 plates for the seed to pass through into the hopper, while the 

 plates of others have edge-hole plates, i.e. the holes are in the 

 form of notches in the edge of the plate. The general ex- 

 perience seems to be that for ordinary purposes, and with 

 ordinary seed of variable size and shape, the centre-hole plate 



CHAP. 

 IX. 



Fig. 143A. — A home-made hand planter 

 for maize. (After Myrick, The 

 Book of Corn.) 



fjj. 



Fig. 143B. — Home-made marker 

 for planting maize by hand. 

 (After Myrick, The Book of 

 Corn.) 



does the best work, resulting in fewer misses in the row. It 

 seems likely that the edge-hole plate would plant more evenly 

 and accurately, provided the seed were very evenly graded 

 and uniform, otherwise the centre-hole plate is preferable. 



346. Check-rowing on small areas (up to, say, 200 acres) has 

 an advantage in that it enables the farmer to cultivate both 

 up and down and also across the field, and thus to get rid 

 of a large proportion of weeds. But it takes a longer time, 

 and on large areas the farmer may not have labour enough 

 for this inter-cultural tillage. Moreover when check-rowing 

 bunches four or five plants in a hill, the results appear 



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