Vol. LXV. No. 2928, NEW YORK, MARCH 10, 1906. weekly, ai.oo per year. 
STRENUOUS POTATO AND CORN GROWING 
How They Do It in West Virginia. 
TWO CROPS A YEAR.—Growing a crop of corn 
and potatoes on the same land in one year is not 
usual in this latitude, but it is done here nearly every 
year, and occasionally a bumper crop of both is grown. 
It is done by liberal manuring and thorough cultiva¬ 
tion. The land is plowed as early in the Spring as 
possible and as deep as 10 inches where the soil will 
bear it. Not more than one inch of subsoil is turned 
up at once, if the soil is thinner than nine inches, which 
in our hilly country is always the case some place in 
almost every field. It does not pay to plant potatoes 
in soil that will not bear plowing five inches deep. Soon 
after the first of April, when the soil is dry, it should 
be disked thoroughly and then made perfectly fine with 
a smoothing harrow. A week previous, a few potatoes 
were buried in this soil. These are now 
examined, and if the buds have started 
to grow, planting is begun at once. If 
they have not started wait until these 
buds do start, for this shows that the 
ground is warm enough. 
PREPARING FOR POTATOES.— 
Potatoes should start to grow at once 
when cut and put in the ground. The 
seed ought to be plump, solid and per¬ 
fectly dormant when planted. If you 
plant potatoes too early nothing is 
gained, and the risk of the heavy April 
rains that we sometimes have is taken. 
These heavy rains that beat together 
the soil and cause it to bake are the 
potatoes’ greatest peril. A soil per¬ 
fectly fitted, then subjected to such 
rains, is about as hard to get fit for 
potatoes again as it was before it was 
plowed at all. A double-shovel plow, if 
horses are heavy enough, or a single¬ 
shovel plow if they are lighter, ran as 
deep as the land is plowed, driving back 
and forth, and then cross-plowed in the 
same manner, thoroughly cutting every 
inch of the ground, both ways, and then 
thoroughly harrowed as before, makes 
a good seed bed again out of a rain- 
soaked and wind-baked soil. This is 
tedious work, but it is making the most 
of hard luck, and making a prospect 
for a good crop that you had lost. 
There is no use in expecting a crop of 
potatoes out of hard soil. If you have 
already planted your potatoes, and you 
have such a rain, you are in a worse 
fix, but you can help it by planting some¬ 
thing else, or you can harrow the land every few days 
till you can see the potatoes in the row. 1 hen with 
a single-shovel iron plow-stock, with a narrow plow, 
run very carefully so as not to plow out the plants en¬ 
tirely under the rows on both sides. 1 his will rake 
die sprouts off some of the potatoes, but it will loosen 
up the ground and make some good potatoes. 1 hen 
plow the middles of the rows out with narrow shovels. 
This is expensive, and is never looked for, in estimat¬ 
ing the cost of a crop. This is the crop that was a 
failure without this work. Some one may know how to 
get in line for a crop in some cheaper way, but I 
don’t. As a plea for a thorough preparation of the soil 
I repeat the advice, not to plant in hard land. It 
should be pulverized thoroughly, and kept so till the 
seed is in the ground and the plants have attained sev¬ 
eral inches growth; after which nothing can be done 
better than shallow cultivation that freshens the sur¬ 
face of the soil all over the land every four to seven 
days; if the ground is dry it should be freshened im¬ 
mediately after every rain, if the surface is not too 
wet. This shallow cultivation should be kept up as 
long as a horse can get along the rows without break¬ 
ing the vines. Don't be afraid to cultivate because 
bloom is on the potatoes, nor because the vines are too 
large, provided you can get through without injuring 
them. 
THE DOUBLE CROP.—We have planted our Early 
Rose potatoes single eye to the piece, every 12 or 15 
inches, in rows 34 inches or a little less apart and about 
four inches deep. If we look across the rows the field 
looks like a meadow. Along the rows appear parallel 
hedges about eight inches apart, with only an occasional 
straggling top. The horse can get through and drag 
his hoe, and leave only a few broken leaves that have 
a sort of disapproving appearance and we have almost 
repented that we did it, but we think we did .right, as 
the cultivation was very shallow, but we promise that 
we will not do it again. The hand corn planter is 
now loaded, and every two feet a hill of corn is planted 
between these hedges. In a week the corn is up, four 
or five inches high. The potato tops have fallen over 
it, and it is so smothered that most of it will not stand 
up. We take hoes or potato diggers and scratch around 
the corn, between the rows, getting out any weeds that 
may have started, and part the vines over the corn 
hills; in a week or two do the same thing over again. 
Perhaps half the corn is smothered out. but still enough 
is left. As the potato tops begin to die, go through 
and scratch out weeds and about the corn, freshening 
the earth a little. It takes about a day’s work to the 
acre each time, say three or four times. Always be care¬ 
ful of the potato vines; this lightens the work of the 
corn cultivation, which consists mainly of getting out 
the weeds and pulling the corn tops through the potato 
vines. When digging time comes the ground is so 
clean that the labor of corn cultivation is saved in this 
work, while the potato crop has gained something by 
the cultivation, and the corn crop is clear profit except 
the harvesting. I have raised more than one hundred 
bushels of corn to the acre, after a fine crop of pota¬ 
toes. 
THE HARVEST.—The corn is harvested first. Once 
in five years we get a good crop of corn, once in eight 
years I did not get any corn. The rest of the time 
we always got feed and occasionally good crops of corn, 
except last year; my average crop of Early Rose pota¬ 
toes has been 200 bushels per acre. We sometimes get 
over 300 bushels, which is an unusual yield for our 
soil and climate. The average of merchantable corn 
would probably not exceed 30 bushels per acre; its feed¬ 
ing value, however, on a farm would probably equal 
50 cents per acre. This late corn is sometimes bitten 
by frost; then we have no merchantable corn, but if it 
is cut up promptly and stored in the barn as soon as 
dry enough, these immature stalks and ears are almost 
as good as well-matured stalks for feed for cows. I 
have often wintered horses and done considerable work 
with them on no other feed, except 
wheat straw. In feeding, I count each 
stalk equivalent to an ear of corn, and 
the horses do finely on it, and cows will 
frequently eat the entire stalk in prefer¬ 
ence to hay. 
WHEAT FOLLOWS.—After pota¬ 
toes are dug, the land is leveled, dragged 
and rolled, and wheat is sown. We do 
not care much how late it is. In the 
Spring clover is sown, and after the 
wheat is off the clover has full posses¬ 
sion of the land for that year. The 
next year clover hay is taken off. The 
second crop of clover is cut down in the 
Fall and left on the ground. By Spring 
this is all decayed, and the land is loose, 
and easily prepared for potatoes. Any 
other land than clover sod, especially if 
it is heavy Blue grass, ought to be 
plowed in late Fall or early Winter. I 
am not sure that I have ever got any 
pay out of commercial fertilizers on 
potatoes, though stable manure never 
fails to gve an account of itself. 
West Virginia. j. w. j. 
WHAT APPLES SHALL WE EAT? 
THE QUESTION OF LOCALITY. 
I realize that locality has all to do with 
the proper selection of varieties. The 
Spy is one of the most profitable in 
northern New York. With a few nota¬ 
ble exceptions, it is not a profitable apple 
in the Hudson Valley. Some of the best 
Winter sorts in New York are late Fall 
varieties as we go farther south. 
The York Imperial in southern Penn¬ 
sylvania, Maryland and Virginia is doubtless the 
most profitable variety in those localities. It is an open 
question if it will ever be a paying apple in New York 
State. The question therefore of adaptation to locality 
it the first to be considered. Next, there are local or 
easily reached markets that will make a variety profit¬ 
able in one locality when it would be unwise to plant 
it commercially in another where it would flourish 
equally well, but where it could not be profitably han¬ 
dled. As an instance, take the Yellow Transparent, one 
that does well over a large area, but on account of the 
extreme delicacy of its texture it is only profitable 
where it can be marketed quickly and with short trans¬ 
portation; or the Red Astrachan, although not a long- 
lived tree, and very susceptible to Apple canker, for a 
filler in the East, where New England markets are 
easily reached, T find it one of my most profitable kinds. 
Yet in western New York it returns little profit. Any¬ 
thing that I may say later must therefore be modified by 
the above considerations. 
COMMERCIALISM VS. QUALITY.—There must 
THE HEAD OF THE WHITE BREAD-WINNERS. Fig. 93. 
