44 



ONIONS ON MUCK 



Mr. Bippert (Erie County) : We got about sixty cents 

 a bushel, for a few of them fifty. This winter we are getting 

 a dollar and a half a bushel on the Buffalo market. 



Mr. Work : Perhaps it will be well for us to listen to Mr. 

 Hay of- Clyde as he outlines the method of his neighborhood. 



Mr. Hay's Remarks. 



Mr. Hay: If Eve flavored Adam's soup with onions or 

 served them raw at a vegetable growers' banquet, she prob- 

 ably did not have the kind of onion that we grow, but one 

 of nearly uniform thickness from bottom to top. The bulb, 

 I believe, is a product of development. The getting of seed 

 that will produce the properly developed bulb I consider the 

 first essential of successful onion growing. Generally, profit 

 is not derived in any truck crop from a normal yield and nor- 

 mal price, but from a yield or price above the average. This 

 is especially true of onions. Therefore, it behooves us to get 

 a strain of marketable onions that will produce above the 

 average number of bushels per acre. A man should never 

 look twice at an extra dollar if, by paying it out, he can se- 

 cure a better grade of seed. A very small increase in yield 

 will pay big interest on the extra dollar so invested. Right 

 here you are referred to Mr. Greffrath, who, as chairman of 

 our Seed Committee, is trying for and I hope succeeding in 

 securing better seeds for us. Some of us are growing our 

 own seeds with fair success, though it is probable that only 

 under irrigation can we get the best results. I aim by care- 

 ful selection of bulbs for seed to obtain a type of onion hav- 

 ing its long axis vertical rather than horizontal. Care must 

 be taken, however, not to get the onion too long, or a crop 

 of scallions may result. 



I have here two types, one of which I aim to grow. Those 

 onions take about the same ground space, but if you turn them 

 up the other way, you will see that one onion is much larger 

 than the other, which, while occupying the same area as the 

 other, should and does produce a larger number of bushels 

 per acre. 



Rotation of Crops. 



The second requisite for success, I believe, lies in rotation 

 of crops, and in this rotation I have found nothing better to 



