148 The Potato 



account to prevent coarseness, a common fault complained 

 of by city buyers in Rurals. Early types like the Bliss 

 Triumph and Irish Cobbler are usually planted closer 

 together than late varieties. In Europe it is a common 

 practice to use small tubers uncut for seed. These are 

 often secured by planting very close, sometimes as little 

 as six inches apart in the row. As before noted, wide 

 spacing allows faster digging on stony soils. Regions 

 of intensive potato-culture, such as Maine, Long Island 

 and the coast-trucking region, usually plant rows 30 to 

 36 inches apart and the seed dropped 12 to 16 inches 

 apart in the rows or 12,000 to 16,000 hills to the acre. 

 Regions with stony soils, as the Steuben Coimty and 

 Chateaugay sections of New York, plant to some extent 

 in checked hills about 3 feet each way or less than 5000 hills 

 to the acre. The regions where the expense for rent of 

 land, fertilizer and care are high use close planting, while 

 low-priced land with other small expenses allows more 

 space to each hill, which may be of value in bad seasons. 



Planting tools 



Machine planters of several types are in use and a 

 larger proportion of the total crop is planted by machinery 

 each year. Hand planting is used mainly in stony and 

 rough sections, in the South where the labor is cheap and 

 not well adapted to using machinery and to sections 

 and farms where potato-growing is of small extent and 

 regarded as secondary to other farm crops. Machine 

 planters are nearly universal in such regions of intensive 

 potato culture as northern Maine and Long Island. 



Machine planters are of two types. In one the seed 

 is picked up from a hopper and dropped by revolving 



