Vol. LXVI. No. 2981 
WEEKLY. *1.00 PEK VEAK. 
NEW YORK, MARCH 16, 1907. 
PRIME JERSEY SWEET POTATOES. 
Producing a High-Grade Crop. 
For a number of years Vineland fancy sweet potatoes 
have brought top prices in New York. The sandy soil 
in this vicinity, when a 10 per cent potash fertilizer is 
applied, produces bright yellow sweet potatoes. The 
shape and size of the potatoes grown on sandy soil 
depends mostly on the variety, but quite largely on the 
season or condition of the soil. A rich garden soil 
will produce a large crop, but not “fancy” sweet pota¬ 
toes. Some years only a few set, and these grow large. 
Last year the sweet potatoes were a very good shape, 
size, color and quality, and color is a very important 
item. It is usual, among the best growers, to save 
some small potatoes for seed, selecting from hills that 
show no disease and bear potatoes of the desired shape. 
The Jersey Yellow variety produces the fancy sweet 
potatoes so much desired in the New York market, but 
these arc troubled by the 
disease called stein-rot 
more than the larger, 
coarser looking Big Stem 
variety. The Jersey Yel¬ 
low is, however, a good 
keeper and is now most 
generally grown. 
Owing to the fact that 
sweet potatoes grow rapid¬ 
ly at the latter end of the 
season, harvesting is put 
off until after the first 
frost by many growers. 
Several kinds of diggers 
are in use, a one-horse 
plow, the scoop digger, 
the Atkinson digger and 
the Planet, Jr., digger. 
The harvesting of the 
crop is laborious in any 
case. The potatoes are 
placed (not thrown) m 
piles or rows while .hang¬ 
ing together, as shown in 
Fig. 108. They are then 
sorted into half-bushel or 
five-eighths baskets, hauled 
to the cellar in low- 
wheeled wagons and the 
primes and seconds stored 
in separate bins. Often 
the cellar under the dwed- 
ing-house is used as a 
storeroom. About three 
days before beginning to 
store the crop, a fire is 
built in the stove or fur¬ 
nace, and the temperature 
of the cellar raised to 90 degrees or over, and kept 
there until all the sweet potatoes are in and have 
passed the heavy sweating process. The cellar should 
be ventilated, preferably through an open window, or 
one partly open at the: south end. After a few days 
of this high temperature, the cellar is allowed to cool 
gradually to about 70 degrees, and kept there, or some¬ 
times lower. __ 
A CORN HUSKER IN CONNECTICUT. 
After reading about the Ohio corn liusker on page 
101 I felt constrained to write about the corn husker 
I used last Fall for the first time. Having about 
eight acres or more of corn, and hand buskers asking 
six and seven cents per bushel of ears (and very hard 
to get them at that), I decided it would be best to buy 
a busker. As I never had seen a corn husker in this 
section, or even heard of anyone who had one, it was 
with some trepidation that I ordered one. The ma¬ 
chine was a long time on the road and did not arrive 
till late in November. It was a two-roll husker, yet 
quite a heavy machine, weighing altogether nearly a 
ton. It was set up and started a day or two before 
Thanksgiving, and from the first worked nicely, giving 
no trouble all through nearly 600 bushels of cars. I 
had a five horse-power steam engine to run it, and a 
boy for engineer. All the other regular help was my¬ 
self and hired man. My method was to load two or 
three wagons in the field and then draw them up to the 
barn where the machine stood, then pulling each one up 
to the table the man unloaded while I fed it in. The 
stalks were cut by a harvester and were handled quick¬ 
ly by cutting the bundle open and spreading out a large 
handful of stalks, which went through at a high speed 
as soon as the snapping rolls caught the butts. 
As I did not order the ear carrier for the machine 
we hung a sack over the spout at the end of the husking 
rolls, which proved very convenient, as the corn was 
all bagged up. ready to go to the mill or to the crib. 
The only place where an extra man was needed was to 
take away these bags, as it was a little inconvenient 
for the feeder or unloader to be present and change 
these promptly. The average speed of the machine 
was from 20 to 30 bushels an hour, although in some 
of the big corn we husked as fast as a bushel a minute. 
As most of the corn was sown rather thick to secure 
as much fodder as possible it necessarily made the 
husking slower, also by our method half the time had 
to be spent in the field getting the loads. Some of the 
shelled corn seemed inclined to get into the fodder in 
spite of all our efforts, yet the amount was small. All 
the fodder was blown into one pile in the barn, and 
kept perfectly, the cows eating it up cleaner than I 
ever saw them eat corn fodder before. Another season, 
by using a gasoline engine it will not require an en¬ 
gineer and by profiting by all that I learned this past 
season I believe 1 can run my husker more economi¬ 
cally than ever and would not go back to the hand 
method of husking for anything, for I look upon a 
corn busker as the greatest labor saving machine on the 
farm. wesley n. peck. 
'Connecticut. ___________ 
GREATER CORN YIELDS. 
With Special Reference to New England. 
SOMiE EAR CHARACTERISTICS.—The judging 
of strains of corn by show samples of a few ears has 
of late years become very common, and even the agri¬ 
cultural colleges have elevated the subject to the dig¬ 
nity of a course. There is undoubtedly some value in a 
number of points discussed, but it is particularly notice¬ 
able that most of the points are arbitrarily stated with 
absolutely no data bearing 
upon their meaning. The 
statement is made, for in¬ 
stance, that the ear must 
have a well-covered tip; 
and beautiful illustrations 
arc shown of the proper 
tip and the poor tip. There 
have been no experiments, 
however, to show that a 
well-covered tip is corre¬ 
lated with productiveness, 
while an ear containing an 
equal weight of corn and 
still a portion of unfilled 
tip may possibly indicate 
that a larger ear would 
have been produced but 
for lack of late pollen. 
We have not space to 
take up in detail the dif¬ 
ferent score cards which 
have been originated as a 
basis for judging the best 
sample of seed corn. The 
points of difference are 
small, however, and the 
following may be taken as 
a type: 1. Uniformity of 
exhibit, 10. 2. Maturity 
and market condition, 15. 
3. Shape of ear, 10. 4 and 
5. Color of kernels, 5; 
color of cob, 5. 6. Butts, 
10. 7. Tips, 5. 8. Shape 
of kernel, 10. 9. Propor¬ 
tion of circumference to 
length, 10. 10. Space be¬ 
tween kernels, 5. 11. Pro¬ 
portion of corn to cob, 15; 
total, 100. To put down points of merit as fast as there 
are reasons for them is an excellent way of keeping 
before us a certain standard to use in making our selec¬ 
tions. But these arbitrary score cards show evidence 
of having been manufactured over the office desk rather 
than in the experimental cornfield. Uniformity of a 
type is not necessarily an evidence of pure stock, unless 
it has been selected with solely this end in view. The 
selection of only high-yielding ears may give a good 
pure strain with considerable variation in appearance. 
Points Nos. 1, 3 and 8 are primarily points which tend 
toward uniformity of kernel, and hence are of some ad¬ 
vantage when planted with a check row planter. But 
it is a question how much difference in yielding power 
between two similar ears we can afford to discard in 
favor of this slight advantage. On the other hand 
