THE RTJRAb NEW-YORKER 
741 
1912. 
WORK ON SOUTH JERSEY TRUCK FARM 
Lively Times. —The Summer months 
are the most exacting of all in truck 
farm work. Planting time for our main 
truck crops is over, and work now con¬ 
sists of cultivating, hoeing, gathering 
and marketing. In common with most 
truckers throughout this section, we 
plant few crops closer than 30 inches. 
This allows ample room for horse cul¬ 
tivation and we keep the harrow going 
as much as possible. For cultivating all 
crops, other than sweet potatoes, we use 
ordinary five-tooth hoe-harrows. These 
are iron frame harrows and can be re¬ 
gulated to work at various widths by a 
lever. The lever adjustment saves much 
time when going from one crop to an¬ 
other and is also more convenient than 
are the slide-set harrows. These har¬ 
rows are also arranged so the teeth or 
hoes can be set deep or shallow. 
Cultivating. —When cultivating egg¬ 
plants, tomatoes, cantaloupes or other 
crops easily injured by careless harrow¬ 
ing, we have the right hand tooth next 
to the row set shallow and if possible 
have it with a rounded edge or else 
partly worn out. This avoids injury that 
often results when one of the longer 
sharp pointed teeth is allowed to run 
along near the plants, tearing up many 
of the new roots. By having the har¬ 
row arranged as described it is not 
necessary to use hand hoes at all on 
crops like eggplants, peppers or toma¬ 
toes. The hoeing can be done with the 
harrow. It is necessary to have a short 
singletree, 18 or 20 inches long, how¬ 
ever, when running close to the row or 
many of the plants will be broken off. 
For cultivating sweet potatoes we have 
a regular sweet potato harrow. This 
has rods attached so that the sides of 
the ridges will be scraped close up to 
the plant. This harrow has three teeth, 
shaped somewhat different and larger 
than those on the five-tooth harrow, to 
stir the soil between the ridges. There 
are sweet potato harrows having one 
large back tooth and two side plows, 
but after using one for two seasons we 
decided it threw up too much soil and 
kept the ridge too wide for best results 
with that crop. The one we use now 
has no side plows. We have our sweets 
in drills, plants 18 inches apart. Other 
growers have plants far enough apart so 
they can harrow both ways. With 
either method some hand work is neces¬ 
sary. But for this we seldom use a hoe, 
for a tool locally known as a “scalper” 
or “browser” takes its place. 
Scalping Weeds. —This “scalper” is a 
simple affair and can easily be made by 
any blacksmith in a short time, and the 
cost, aside from the handle, need not 
exceed 20 cents. It is made of an iron 
rod about 24 inches long and three-six¬ 
teenths to one-fourth inch in diameter. 
This rod is bent in the form of a tri¬ 
angle (see Fig. 291) and the two ends 
welded together so as to go in an or¬ 
dinary hoe handle. Before bending, 
however, six inches in the center of the 
rod (afterward the base of the triangle) 
should be heated and pounded out to 
make a flattened surface at least one-half 
inch wide, with a slight bevel so that 
one side will be sufficiently thin to make 
a reasonably sharp edge. Measure one- 
half inch on either side of the flattened 
surface or blade and bend from those 
two points so as to form the triangle 
with the blade as the base. The sides 
of the triangle are about five inches long 
and this leaves two ends of inches 
to be welded together, forming the 
shank. When inserting in a handle the 
scalper is bent at the shank so as to 
make a slight angle with the handle. 
The scalper is the lightest and most effi¬ 
cient tool we have for working in sweet 
potatoes. We are often compelled to 
put Italians in the potato patch when 
work becomes pressing and if given a 
hoe they would do much damage, but 
by having the scalper even green hands 
can do fairly good work with little in¬ 
jury, as the plant is protected from the 
two extremes of the blade or cutting 
edge by the rounded corners made by 
the unsharpened rod. The scalper takes 
the place of a hoe everywhere except 
in heavy soil or where soil must be 
pulled up to the hill. Although used 
mainly for sweets, we find it valuable 
for working in strawberries, cabbage, 
onions, watermelons, cantaloupes, etc., 
and it proves a great help in our fight 
against grass and weeds. Crab grass is 
especially troublesome on all the sandy 
fields and it will compel us to put forth 
our best efforts during the next two 
months to keep ahead of it. 
Italian Pickers. —But not all of our 
time is spent in fighting grass and cul¬ 
tivating crop. There is produce to 
gather and market. April 27 we com¬ 
menced cutting asparagus and are still 
at it. To-day, June 8, there were 120 
bunches from the field of one and one- 
quarter acre. We are also into berries. 
Thursday of this week a gang of 20 
Italians came down from Philadelphia! 
and got themselves settled away for 
their Summer outing. Yesterday morn¬ 
ing they started in before five o’clock 
for the first picking of Gandy straw¬ 
berries. A “boss” kept them straight 
and acted as interpreter. He gets $1.50 
a day, counting from the time they conre 
down until they return, and he certainly 
earns his money. He carries a big club, 
possibly with a knowledge of the use¬ 
fulness of the “big stick,” and no one 
questions his authority. The pickers 
worked steadily through the day, with 
only a light lunch of hard bread with 
bologna or sardines, and when six 
o’clock came were well content to call 
it a day. They picked 124 crates of 32 
quarts each, or 3,968 quarts, making an 
average of nearly 200 quarts for each 
picker. One woman made nearly $5, 
while another with her husband made 
$7.75. All were satisfied and went home 
happy and contented to make a full 
meal of stewed milk-weed and maca¬ 
roni. As the field had to be picked 
over by noon to-day, they retired early, 
but were out and at it early this morn¬ 
ing and finished up by half-past 11, get¬ 
ting 52 crates or 1,664 quarts. These 
berries were sold to dealers at Pedrick- 
town for $2.15 a crate and shipped in 
iced cars to Boston. Six or eight cars 
were sent from that place to-day. The 
late varieties of berries are just begin¬ 
ning to ripen and the next two weeks 
will be busy ones for shippers and 
growers alike. For us it marks the be¬ 
ginning of the busiest time in our farm 
work. From now on we will have first 
peas, beans, cabbage, then tomatoes, egg¬ 
plants, peppers, etc., to market; hay to 
gather, rye to cut, and many other 
things, all of which should be done at 
the right time and sandwiched in with 
the important work of cultivation and 
tillage. TRUCKER, JR. 
IN THE NICK OF TIME. 
I so often suffer from the effects of 
not being able to do things at the right 
time that when I do get something done 
just right it makes me happy, and I 
want to tell somebody. The present case 
is this, a simple one, but it teaches a 
lesson. The piece of ground which I 
had planned for carrots and beets 
turned up lumpy and hard, especially 
in places where it had been driven over 
in spreading manure. It had been 
plowed and harrowed, then later har¬ 
rowed again and gone over with a lump 
crusher. This put it in fair shape to 
sow, but not satisfactory. I decided 
to wait and go over it again. Sunday 
afternoon brought nice showers. Mon¬ 
day morning the ground seemed just a 
little too damp, but we put on the team, 
going over the ground once with the 
harrow, then with the lump-crusher. 
This took only a short time. I then 
started the seeder in a mellow, moist 
seed-bed affording ideal conditions for 
the seed to start. This extra working 
will greatly improve the tilth of the 
soil and reduce weed growth, thus im¬ 
proving the crop and lessening its cost 
materially, though no one can say how 
much. 
When I was farming in the college 
class-room I could do these things as 
they ought to be done, but now it is 
different. I have not forgotten how, 
but I find many more hindrances. Other 
things need doing at the same time and 
I cannot reach them all. The business 
calls for more capital than I can com¬ 
mand and I am unable to keep it all 
moving aright. My troubles are the 
same which other farmers meet. It 
does not help us to tell us that we 
ought to avoid them; we know that 
already. We should like to know how. 
I doubt if we are likely to get much 
help from outside sources. We must 
work out our own problems, but they 
are problems which it will pay us well 
to study. If we can adjust our work 
to the amount of capital and labor 
which we can command so that things 
can be done well and at the right time 
it will be greatly to our advantage. 
We cannot hope to do this completely, 
for weather and season are too uncer¬ 
tain, but we ought to make progress. I 
have not told about the things which 
are waiting while we fitted that 
piece of ground, but they were there. 
It might be a different story to tell 
about them. feed w. card. 
Bradford Co., Pa. 
SPRAYING POTATOES AND MUSTARD. 
F. G. 8., West Cummington, Mass .—What 
can I spray wild yellow mustard with in 
my potato field to kill it? The land has 
not been plowed for 40 years or more 
until two years ago, and the mustard covers 
the field to hide the potatoes. After I 
have finished cultivating them I want to 
know what I can use that will be ef¬ 
fectual and not kill the potatoes. 
Ans. —It is doubtful if you succeed 
in your plan of killing yellow mustard 
in a potato field, without injuring the 
potatoes also. A number of experi¬ 
ments have been made in the treatment 
of weeds by spraying. It appears that 
the only possible success in such prac¬ 
tice is where plants of different natures 
are mixed together. The broad-leaved 
plants are injured severely by the 
sprays, where the narrow-leaved plants 
receive but little injury. The follow¬ 
ing from a circular of the Ohio Ex¬ 
periment Station, states these facts 
well: 
Most of our weeds are broad-leaved, or 
as we all know, plants with two seed- 
leaves. Our cereals and grasses are nar¬ 
row-leaved plants which produce a single 
seed leaf. Upon the different reactions of 
these two classes of plants to the chemical 
sprays we must depend for our results—for 
injury to the weeds without harm to the 
crop. We find that nearly all crops and 
weeds of the broad-leaved class of plants 
will be injured by these chemieal sprays, 
and all weeds of the narrow-leaved class 
will escape injury by the sprays. It 
follows that crops of the clovers, Al¬ 
falfa, Soy beans, vetches and rape will be 
killed by such chemicals as destroy broad- 
leaved weeds, and that the sedges, quack- 
grass, crab-grass and wild onion or garlic 
will not be killed by spraying with such 
solutions as are not injurious to the 
grasses, cereal grains, etc. We may hope 
to destroy such weeds as mustards, dande¬ 
lion. ox-eye daisy, white-top, thistles, carrot, 
parsnip, elders, poison ivy, ragweed, cockle- 
bur and horse-nettle, as well as practically 
all other broad-leaved weeds, by use of 
these sprays. At the same time, these 
sprays will leave Blue-grass, Timothy, Ited- 
top and other grasses, including the grow¬ 
ing cereal grains, such as wheat, oats, rye, 
etc., without injury if properly adapted in 
strength and time of application. 
Briefly summed tip. weed sprays, when 
properly adapted, should be available for 
the destruction of the larger portion of our 
pasture and grain, field infesting weeds, 
when the methods are rightly and economi¬ 
cally developed. It would certainly be a 
travesty on our methods of culture to expect 
to substitute weed sprays for culture in 
the growing crop, such as in corn fields 
and the like. 
As the potato plants and the mustard 
are both broad-leaved, any spraying 
which would kill the mustard would be 
almost sure to injure the potato leaves 
also. It is doubtful, therefore, if such 
spraying would help. If you want to 
get rid of the mustard, a better plan 
would be to sow this field in oats next 
year, and then spray the field with a 
(Solution of iron sulphate whi,!e Ibhe 
mustard plants are small. If thoroughly 
done, this would get rid of the mus¬ 
tard and not injure the oats. 
A Tree Specialist Takes Exception. 
I feci constrained to take exception to 
Prof. Blake's article on “Another Tree 
Dope” in which he casts reproach on the 
tree specialist. As to the merits of the 
remedy offered by one Kleckner, and his 
victims, I can only say it serves them— 
the victims—right. But. pray why dignify 
a faker with the legitimate term “spe¬ 
cialist”? Would the professor give that 
appellation to a quack who claims to treat 
human ills in some miraculous manner? 
Assuredly not! There are trained, honest, 
successful tree specialists as well as there 
are honorable specialists in therapeutics 
and in surgery. “There is a fool born 
every minute,” and if fruit growers and 
other agriculturists want to be hutn- 
bugged,tbey are only exemplifying what T.P. 
Barnum said of the American people. 
While it may make “a difference whose 
ox is gored,” a common sense of justice 
to an honest calling impels the writer 
to protest against the ill chosen language 
of the professor. Under the title of tree 
specialist the writer has been employed 
and endorsed by many representative fruit 
growers in Western and Northern New 
York, and feels that his calling is as honor¬ 
able as is that of Professor Blake. 
c. F. B. 
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