i7o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
March 3. 
or where the fertilizer went until the crop was har¬ 
vested. The average hired man is like a physician in 
one respect—he can bury his mistakes under ground. 
Our two one-legged men will do all this work at a 
single operation, and know absolutely just where each 
seed piece and each pound of fertilizer were deposited. 
They would hitch their horses to a potato planter. This 
machine has a hopper for fertilizer and another for 
potato seed. One man rides in front to drive and the 
other behind to regulate the planting. The horses start 
and, at a touch, a plow drops in place at the front of 
A PATCH OF POLE BEANS. Fig. 71. 
the machine to open the furrow. Close behind it a 
broad tube scatters just the required amount of fer¬ 
tilizer at the bottom of the furrow, and a steel hand or 
shaker reaches out to mix this fertilizer with the soil 
and keep it from direct contact with the seed. The 
seed pieces vary in size, and. left to itself, the machine 
would “skip” more or less. The man riding at the rear 
attends to that, keeping the revolving disks filled with 
seed pieces. With a fast walking team he looks from 
a distance like a man playing the piano, and he is surely 
responsible for harmony of distance if not of sound. 
The seed pieces are dropped evenly 
in the moist soil at the bottom of 
the furrow. Two revolving disks fol¬ 
low and tumble the soil over upon the 
seed—thus filling the furrow and, if 
desired, a flat piece of steel reaches 
out behind to flatten or pat down 
the ridge. While completing the 
work the machine makes a mark as 
a guide for the next row. Our two 
defectives reach the end of the furrow 
and look back over a smooth, even 
job. Then they realize that instead 
of being thrown out of farming by 
their misfortune they are decidedly 
“in it,” since no four legs on earth 
could have put the seed pieces and 
fertilizer under ground more rapidly 
and evenly. If desired, one of the 
men can drive the planter while the 
other cuts the seed or handles the 
fertilizer. This planter does the work 
of opening and closing the furrow, 
and dropping the fertilizer much like 
the other, but attends to the seed¬ 
dropping itself. Instead of a man 
riding behind to fill in missing seed 
this planter works a revolving wheel which carries at 
intervals about the best imitation of the human finger 
and thumb that has been put together. These grasp 
at the seed pieces and drop them in the furrow—making 
some misses, it is true, but leaving one man free. 
FIGHTING WEEDS.—Yet if the soil hold a blessing 
in the shape of a well-planted crop, it may also hold 
a curse in the form of weed seeds; A man may whip 
50 babies while he is fighting one grown-up man. The 
only way to whip a giant with one hand tied behind 
your back is to catch him before he grows up. Mis¬ 
fortune will teach our one-legged farmers that the weeds 
must be nipped before they bud. Potatoes remain under¬ 
ground from 14 to 20 days, but weeds often start in less 
than a week. Not even a man with three legs can keep 
his field clean if he lets the weeds grow until the pota¬ 
toes come up. At the first show of green on the field 
the farmers ride to battle—first on a weeder and then 
on an Acme harrow or plank drag. This work of de¬ 
struction is done before the potatoes appear above 
ground, and the extra tillage helps the coming crop. 
The weeder works with long quivering steel fingers 
through the soil, scratching and picking out the weeds. 
The weeder scratches the weeds out, and the Acme 
or drag flattens and crushes them. It is all done by rid¬ 
ing, and the potatoes come up in clean ground. When 
the vines are too large for the weeder our one-legged 
friends mount their riding cultivators—which work on 
both sides of the row at once. The rider may throw 
(or rather, let the horses do it for him) the teeth of 
the cultivator near the row, or away from it as seems 
best for his work. He may work the .soil between 
the rows at any reasonable depth, level or throw earth 
to the vines and hill them. Acres are grown in this 
way on clean ground, without the touch of a hoe. But 
if, for any reason, hand hoeing is necessary the one- 
legged farmer can do even that. He lengthens the axle 
of the cultivator so as to straddle two rows, and fastens 
seats so that they come just over the rows. A low- 
down wagon will answer the same purpose. Seated in 
this way, over the rows, the men hoe—finishing the 
work of the cultivator as they move slowly or stop at 
intervals. This is the hardest part of the work. Neces¬ 
sity will lighten it by showing the importance of work 
among the small weeds. 
SPRAYING.—Fifteen years ago the two one-legged 
men might have gone thus far, but here they would 
have stopped to call for help, for beetle and blight were 
too active for the horse machinery then in use. Now 
either man can ride on a spraying machine which will 
cover 30 acres in one day—the work all done by the 
horses. One man can prepare the Bordeaux Mixture 
and Paris-green while the other drives. There is some 
advice to shirk this part of the work and not attempt 
spraying, but we believe it one of the most important 
features of potato culture. There was once a time when 
the potato crop was as sure as the corn crop—surer 
than wheat. The Potato beetle appeared and after 
some years of trial we learned how to handle it. Now 
diseases—rots and blights—have appeared and so at¬ 
tacked potato vine and tuber that the crop is now a 
gamble—as much so as peach growing in a cold cli¬ 
mate. It is worth every precaution, and spraying is a 
form of life insurance. 
DIGGING.—When the crop is mature four horses 
are hitched to the powerful digger and the tubers are 
thrown out. It is a question which machine gives a 
more complete transfer of human labor to horse power 
—the planter or the digger. Potatoes were originally 
dug by driving the point of a fork or hook down under 
them and lifting earth, stones, soil, tubers and weeds. 
The tubers were then shaken free. The digger substi¬ 
tutes for this work by imitating a rooting hog. It 
A BUNCH OF IvLORIDA POMELOS. Fig. 72 . 
thrusts a stout steel nose down under the row, gather¬ 
ing nearly a bushel of soil, weeds and vines from each 
hill. This bushel is carried up an inclined plane where 
shakers sift out the soil and slender rods pick out the 
vines and weeds, so that the two or three quarts of tubers 
may be dropped with the large stones on top of the 
ground behind. Diggers have been perfected so that 
the tubers, after being freed from the soil are carried 
over an endless apron and dropped into a wagon which 
follows the digger. This machine operates well in open 
soil, free from stones, but fails in stony ground, since 
stones and potatoes are thrown into the wagon together. 
There is one case on record where a man, left without 
farm help, hitched his digger to a steam traction engine 
and fastened a large float or stone boat behind the 
digger. This powerful engine held the digger firmly in 
the ground, and most of the potatoes fell upon the 
stone boat and were carried to the sides of the field. 
CONCLUSIONS.—We have taken the potato crop 
as the one requiring the most varied operations to show 
how modern machinery may be made to help the defec¬ 
tive. We can also show how a crop of corn or a crop 
A GROUP OF GARDEN FOXGLOVES. Fig. 73. 
See Ruralisius, Page 188. 
of hay can be handled by men not strong, or with only 
one hand or foot. It cannot be claimed that such men 
can do the work as easily or well as those who are 
strong and able-bodied, yet modern machinery has made 
it possible for men to make a living at farming who, in 
former years, would have been debarred on account of 
physical deformity. The modern use of high-grade 
chemical fertilizers has greatly helped in this develop¬ 
ment. These fertilizers provide a substitute for the 
plant food in stable manure, and when used in con¬ 
nection with some sod crop keep the 
soil in a high state of fertility. The 
old favorite rotation was potatoes, 
wheat, grass two years and corn. 
Now men like our one-legged farm¬ 
ers cut out the corn and wheat and 
run a three-year rotation of potatoes 
and grass. In this grass alone is 
seeded after potatoes, cut two years 
and then plowed for potatoes again. 
Under this system both potatoes and 
hay are sold, though in many loca¬ 
tions it would be possible to pasture 
the grass to save the labor of cutting 
it, and thus save fertilizer for the 
potatoes. h. w. c. 
SOME ECONOMIES IN SCALE 
FIGHTING. 
Along the Hudson River a multi¬ 
tude of fruit men have supported 
measures which have certainly de¬ 
layed the general scale fight some 
years. I have traveled the district 
since 1899, and know some of the 
first cases were blotted out in com¬ 
munities which have not yet needed 
a scale spray. This was economy surely, and in all 
cases the prompt measures of early days in both orchards 
and nurseries paid, for up to last year I am sure 90 per 
cent of the growers on the west bank of the Hudson 
have been able to rest on their arms awaiting the call 
to “spray or surrender.” These calls are coming very 
fast now, however, and changing conditions bring 
changing needs. Spraying knowledge is almost as vital 
to a community with infested orchards as supervision 
to secure clear nursery stock is to a clean section. A 
few men have been through an eight-year war. They 
heard at first that the Californians used lime, salt and 
