1912. 
PLAIN SAILING FOR POTATOES. 
After Killing the Witch Grass. 
“We left the witch grass sod, page 1210,- December 
23, with one crop of potatoes taken off and the ground 
left as it fell from the digger to freeze and remain 
during the Winter. Did you call it plain sailing from 
this on?” 
“Yes. This piece of ground could be beaten for 
potatoes another year only by a clover sod from which 
only one crop of clover had been taken since seeded 
down, and by an old field sod dressed with barn 
manure free from witch grass that had borne buck¬ 
wheat one year. The dead roots of the witch grass 
lighten the soil and hold the moisture, two things ab¬ 
solutely essential to big crops of potatoes.” 
“How would you tackle it in the Spring?” 
“That would depend entirely upon how my work 
came. If I had a lot of grain to sow, fences to build, 
manure to haul, etc., I would handle it differently 
than I would if my hands were free and I had nothing 
else to do. If I could do as I choose I would ap¬ 
proach this piece of land, as soon as dry enough to 
work, with my team hitched to a disk harrow. When 
well on it I would swing the brake clear open and 
harrow it lengthwise and crosswise. If this mellowed 
the surface I would leave it for seven days; if it did 
not, I would harrow it till it did and then let it lie. 
The rest between harrowings is fully as important as 
the harrowing and I believe more so. I have yet to 
see the piece of land that was properly fitted for po¬ 
tatoes without the rests.” 
“Wouldn’t you plow this ground at all?” 
“Most certainly I would. After harrowing twice 
thoroughly at intervals with rests between I would 
plow it deep and harrow 
at the bottom side of 
the furrow, beginning 
immediately in the same 
way I had at the top, 
and just about as mucl>. 
Now this field is ready 
to plant. If, however, 
you are in a drought, 
delay, for the drought! 
may break. If it is! 
rainy and wet you 
will not get it fitted 
any too soon. Do your 
best.” 
“What about your 
planting?” 
“You have got three 
questions in one there; 
first, the tool; second, 
its adjustment, and 
third, the fertilization. 
Taking the planter first, 
use a machine that you 
know how many hills 
you skip. It is the miss¬ 
ing hills that talk 
loud at digging time. 
Some pieces of seed are bound to fail unless you ex¬ 
amine every piece separately, which would be possible 
only on a limited scale. These together with even a 10- 
per cent failure of the machine to perform its duty 
would make altogether too many missing hills. In the 
adjustment of the planter set it to run a piece of seed 
every foot. By so doing you will avoid coarse stock 
in the Fall, which is such a serious setback, especially 
if potatoes are plenty and low in price. Plant the 
rows 30 inches apart, and for the convenience it will 
be to you in working them later insist that they be 
absolutely straight. Then comes the fertilization. 
This ought to be treated in an article by itself. Per¬ 
haps it is enough to say here that it is nothing but 
fair to the ground to put in as much fertility as you 
expect to take out in your crop. If farm manure is 
used, put it on the sod long enough before breaking 
to allow it to disappear entirely, otherwise your crop 
will be rough and scabby, and you will, likely enough, 
have a rough and scabby time in selling it. If com¬ 
mercial fertilizer is used the best is none too good. 
Some soils produce well on a 4-6-10 that would do 
even better on a 5-7-7; this must be determined by- 
trial. There are two ways of applying it. One is to 
set your planter to run it all in at time of planting 
and have done \yith it. The other is to run in half 
at planting time and the other half when you bury the 
tops just as they break ground. This is done with 
the planter. Remove the plow and the dropper, re¬ 
taining the fertilizer distributor and the disks. I pre¬ 
fer this method myself.” 
"But you haven’t said how may pounds you use to 
the acre.” 
“No; but I did say it was but fair to the ground to 
Put in as much fertility as you expect to take out in 
THE KIJRA.L, NEW-YORKER 
your crop. You certainly can figure that for yourself. 
For rough directions call it 500 pounds to the acre of 
4-6-10 if you expect and intend to raise 100 bushels of 
potatoes to the acre; 1,000 pounds for 200 bushels; 
1500 pounds for 300 bushels, and one ton for 400 
bushels. I think in Maine a very large majority of 
the growers use a ton to the acre, expecting and in¬ 
tending to raise 400 bushels per acre, and what is 
more, they do it, too. Of course at times they get a 
drought or a flood, and they r don't do it, but nobody 
here that I know of has any quarrel with Providence.” 
“After the planting, what?” 
"I ought to say that I am not talking for people 
who raise early potatoes; by that I mean those planted 
before May 15-20. Medium planted (May 20 to June 
10) will need two cultivations with your spring-tooth 
sulky cultivator, or if you prefer onediorse walking 
cultivator before they appear, two to three weeks. 
Late planted potatoes after June 10 will need but one. 
If you are following the plan of making two applica- 
egg hatches the slug is invisible, and his first work is 
to eat a hole through the leaf in order to get on the 
top side of it. If the poison has been previously ap¬ 
plied some of it will be in these first few mouthfuls, 
and that is his end. It may sound incredible, but it 
is a fact nevertheless that lots of fields in Maine 
every year never show a bug. Early and medium- 
planted potatoes naturally have two crops of bugs. 
Late ones have only one. Early potatoes should be 
sprayed when very small, and you will catch almost 
all of the old bugs.” 
“You just spray to kill the bugs?” 
“I do spray to kill the bugs to be sure, but that 
isn’t all; if it was I would use water and Paris green 
instaad of adding lime and blue vitriol, for these 
things cost money. 
“How often do you spray?” 
“There is another thing that you can’t answer unless 
you see the field. When you are spraying for the bugs 
as the primary object, spray only where you want to 
tions of fertilizer after your final cultivation knock catch them, but don’t let them get grown so you can 
the ridges that the planter left flat, use a weeder, a 
brush harrow, or a leveling harrow. Don’t be stuck up 
but use anything that you have that will do the work. 
Go lengthwise or crosswise as you prefer. Take pains 
to keep track of how near the surface the sprouts are 
getting, and do good leveling early enough so as not 
to break off these sprouts when you knock the rows 
down. When the potatoes show so you can follow 
the row, get out your planter again with the. plow 
and seeder removed as I told you before, and bury 
those rows with the fertilizer distributed along just 
ahead of the burying. Three days after go lengthwise 
of the rows with your weeder to flatten down the 
hills that you made in burying; in a day or two every 
see them. If you do it costs too much for poison. 
By adding the Bordeaux you catch the rust germs, 
wherever they are. although I don’t suppose our col¬ 
lege men would allow that this is so. When the bugs 
are done you certainly must continue to spray every 
week or 10 days.” 
“Don’t you trample down the tops?” 
"Yes, you do. But there is no way to avoid it that 
1 know of. A field planted with rows 30 inches apart 
becomes a solid mat, and you cannot tell where the 
rows run. At blossoming time it looks like a great 
flower garden, and then is the time when you have to 
decide whether you are after.al full crop or half a 
crop of potatoes. If you have some good money in- 
_ vested in the fertilizer, 
CATCHING MR. MILK OUT ON THE FLY. Fig. 21 
hill will be up that is coming. From this on directions 
will have to be general instead of specific. At this 
time you haven’t a weed or a spear of grass on the 
field and your potatoes! are up. Of course cultivate 
between the rows until large enough for the final 
hilling, then hill with the horse hoe which straddles 
the row and pulls the dirt from each side close up 
in the seed, and some 
honest sweat in the 
work, you will start the 
horse in the right row 
at the end of the piece, 
keep hoping it won't 
hurt them much, and let 
him feel the row out 
with his feet. As a mat¬ 
ter of fact it won’t hurt 
them at all. You will 
learn this in a few years 
.yourself, but a disinter¬ 
ested onlooker with no 
money invested will in¬ 
variably volunteer the 
advice that you will en¬ 
tirely spoil your crop, 
and you are more than 
half inclined to believe 
him.” 
“Plow long do you 
keep this up?” 
“You can't dig to ad¬ 
vantage until the frost 
kills the vines. You 
ought to know in a gen¬ 
eral way about when to expect frost in your locality. 
Stop spraying two weeks before you expect it.” 
“And then comes digging?” 
“Yes, then comes digging; then for the first time 
are you allowed to know how the game comes out. 
I dig every other row and have them picked in barrels, 
although there is nothing rigid about this. Set the 
around the stock of the potato.. If the hills are a barrels along the edge of the field at intervals of a 
foot apart you will never see a weed or grass, for the 
potato tops will at once cover the ground. Cultivate 
between the! rows with a one-horse cultivator, using a 
12-inch whiffletree as long as you care to.” 
“Are we now done with this field until digging 
time?” 
"No, but you are done with cultivation of it. There 
is another element of distress enters this field when 
the cultivation slacks away.” 
“And what is that?” 
“Spraying.” 
“Where does this come in?” 
"I can’t talk satisfactory about spraying. It is the 
most fussy job on the farm, and any sprayer I have 
ever seen is the most fussy tool on the farm. It is a 
dirty job at best. It is really taking bad medicine. 
Dress for it, and make up your mind that whatever 
comes not to lose your patience and let the job go 
half done, but have a perfect spray each time over 
the field. Begin when the tops are about 10 inches 
high (unless early planted—these spray sooner), use 
to 50 gallons of water five pounds of blue vitriol (cop¬ 
per sulphate) and five pounds of lump lime, slaked. _ 
If hydrated lime is used 30 per cent of it is water, so 
use a third more of it than of the unslaked. Add The littlc English village of Sissinghurst has organized 
..... . , a “wasp club”—offering prizes to the person who will 
some cmd. of poison foi the bugs. The eggs of the bring the most nests and queen wasps before next .Tune! 
bug are laid on the under side of the leaf. When the They have rat and sparrow clubs on the other side also. 
rod; five or six rows will fill them. I prefer barrels 
because you do not have to set down your full basket, 
pick up your bag and then pick up your basket again 
and empty. With the barrels you empty at once. How¬ 
ever, a great deal will depend on your own conven¬ 
ience in putting them into the cellar. Two men to¬ 
gether will handle a barrel of potatoes much easier 
and quicker than the same quantity in bags.” 
“Now you have grown and dug the crop, what 
about selling it?” 
“When you have your crop housed, run your ears 
full of wax as did Ulysses of old so you can’t hear 
the sirens sing, and watch every reliable source for 
estimates of the country’s crop. Take the Government 
reports; they are not absolutely reliable. Take esti¬ 
mates of farm journals; they are always intended to 
be small enough; they are on the bull side of the mar¬ 
ket. Take estimates of trade journals; they are al¬ 
ways on the bear side to keep traders from buying too 
freely; they try to bear the market, and from these 
sources decide the course you must steer.” 
Maine. w. t. guptill. 
