16 
/ 
BEEB-T1ME hm HARVEST. 
garden soil, on the 29th day of April 1882, in 
rows four feet apart, cutting to single eyes, and 
planting one eye in a place, eighteen inches 
apart in the rows, lurrowing the rows four in¬ 
ches deep. They came np well and grew vigor¬ 
ously, being the strongest growing potato I have 
ever seen except the Wall’s Orange, which fully 
equalled it in my grounds. Cultivated once 
with horse and cultivator, after which I kept the 
weeds down with hoe and hand cultivator giv¬ 
ing them entirely level cultivation. Soil sandy 
loam with a slight mixture of clay, not sufficient 
however to bake in the sun. The vines fully 
covered the ground. Sept. 27th, I dug from the 
seven and one-half pounds planting, twenty and 
a half bushels of very nice potatoes, and also in 
addition, one bushel of small and sun-burned 
potatoes, making twenty-one and one-half 
bushels of Belle. My son planted the other 
seven and one-half pounds, in sandy loam soil, 
in a fair state of cultivation upon grouud where 
potatoes were grown the year previous, giving 
as he says a hard trial for them. Getting ten 
and one-iourth bushels of choice sizable potatoes 
for the table, making in this venture a good 
investment. I think the Belle a great acquisi- 
tion. 
The \ lb. of Wall’s Orange, I planted April 
26th, 1882, on an experimental plot of ground. 
Soil same as that upon which the Bdle was 
planted with the exception that one-half of the 
ground had the fall previous been fitted tor on¬ 
ions having had a liberal supply of hen gua¬ 
no and fine barn-yard manure. I cut to single 
eyes, planted in rows four feet apart, putting a 
single eye in a place eighteen inches between in 
the rows and four inches deep, making twenty- 
four eyes, and three rows ot eight eyes to a row, 
one-half of which were on the onion bed; the rest 
not manured. 
I also planted one row of eight eyes each, on 
the same plot with same cultivation everyway, 
except the single eyes were much larger, of 
the following three kinds: Belle, White Peach- 
blow and Early Vermont; all cultivated the 
same with hoe and hand cultivator and level cul¬ 
tivation. All came up well but the Colorado po¬ 
tato bugs destroyed all but eight eyes of the 
Wall’s Orange and injured the orhers consider¬ 
ably before I could head them off. Sept. 29th 
I dug the eight eyes of Wall’s Orange, getting 
64 pounds of good s'ze potatoes and 7 pounds of 
small potatoes. Tne Belle from eight eyes pro¬ 
duced 56 lb«., the Peachblow 48 lbs., and the 
Early Vermout 52 lbs., ail yielding best on the 
soil without manure—not generally the case 
however. On trial of the Orange for eating 
qualities, we all say it equals the best we ha^e 
ever grown not excepting the White Peachblow; 
will also say that knowing all of the circum¬ 
stances attending the growth of the Wall’s Or¬ 
ange that it was no fault of the potato that I 
lost two thirds of the seed, but my fault. First, 1 
should not have cut them so fine, the potatoes 
you sent me being small siza. Seconl, I should 
not have planted so early, should have waited 
until other potatoes were up, so as not to gather 
all of the bugs on so small a pieca of po;atoes. 
I think them also a valuable acquisition to the 
list of potatoes. Yours truly, 
H. S. Taylor. 
SITUATION OF FERTILIZERS 
Dunbar, Pa., Jan. 30, 1883 
Mr. I. F. Tillinghast; 
Dear Sir, I notice your 
reply in Seed-Time and Harvest to my in. 
quiry as to cutting seed potatoes, for which I am 
obliged. There is a point I overlooked upon 
which I wanted your advice and which is in re¬ 
gard to situation of concentrated fertilizers when 
applied in the hill. A late article I have read 
in regard to growth of potatoes, states that all 
the rootlets shoot downwards. If that is so, 
should not the phosphate be in the bottom of the 
furrow and cover slightly before putting in the 
seed instead of above the seed as I have been do¬ 
ing? Please let me know if you have experi¬ 
mented hoth ways and your opinion as to the 
correct plan. Have you sent me a catalogue? 
If so it has gone astray. Also will you have 
?arly cabbage plants to sell, term=, &c? I expect¬ 
ed to get this last information from your cata¬ 
logue. Your reply to the above will be duly ap¬ 
preciated. Yours Truly, 
C. H. Kimball. 
Our practice in using phosphates for potatoes 
has been to drop a small handful in the hill 
and then have it well mixed with the soil before 
dropping the seed. A man will do this rapidly 
with a potato fork. Unless the phosphate is 
thoroughly mixed it often does more damage 
than good. We shall be pleased to hear from 
others upon this subject. We have sent you a 
catalogue for 1883. We shall have no cabbage 
plants before May. 
MUCK FOR CELERY. 
I read in a back number of Seed-Time and 
Harvest that there was one man you knew who 
grow good celery in 1881 and he had a stream 
of water running in his trench. This put me to 
thinkiug. I had one-half acre of swamp muck 
chopped off a year ago, and drained to take off 
surface water. I grubbed it in the spring, and 
at odd times tried all kinds of vegetables, celery 
included. I set some of the earliest on upland 
the usual wav, the balance I set in the swamp 
muck in shallow trenches without manure from 
two to four inches deep as the muck changed 
from wet to dry. From this experience it prov¬ 
ed that dry muck grew celery spontaneously, 
while the cold wet muck grew weak, sickly 
plants of all kinds -f vegetables as well as cel¬ 
ery, cauliflowers in particular. Very late in 
August I had some nice stocky celery plants 
left that I did not like to throw away. I had 
room in the mnck near the other earlier, this 
was set there in double rows as the other but on¬ 
ly three inches and less apart, this grew very 
rapid and at storing time has reached the per¬ 
fection of the early setting, no difference in size 
but not quite as well blanched. Sold equally 
with the early. No manure was used at all, in, 
on .or about the trenches. Its quality, I am in¬ 
formed by consumers, was excelled by none. 
So crisp, juicy, and sweet, and so brittle that it 
would scarcely bear handling. This confirms 
your notes on.celery in number 12. I shall ex- 
