148 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
terly shown most dry rot. Maine seed 
may ripen the crop slightly earlier, but 
often is not so well matured seed as 
New York, and sometimes arriving 
slightly chilled, the grower has a poor 
stand. The growers generally cut the 
seed in as nearly square pieces as possi¬ 
ble; they feed better in the planter and 
have the minimum cut surface. The 
seed is planted by machine n to 14 
inches in the row as quickly as possible 
after being cut to heal over the cut sur¬ 
faces in the ground. 
Nobody practices spreading and lin¬ 
ing seed to dry the cut surfaces. 
Quite a variety of tools are used in 
cultivating to attain the same general 
results—killing of grass and weeds as 
they sprout, aerating the soil and pro¬ 
ducing a well shaped ridge. It is gen¬ 
erally conceded that after the plants 
are large enough to show blossom buds 
and send their roots into the furrows, 
the use of a disk cultivator on the sides 
of the ridges or a middle burster in the 
furrows is detrimental to the plants and 
crops. The tubers grow slowly till the 
crop is 80 to 90 days old from planting, 
when the vines change color from a 
bright green to a leaden shade and in 
the next 10 days the tubers make most 
of their growth. The early plantings 
are dug while the skin still slips on the 
potatoes, the rows being barred off 
with a light plow and the potatoes 
raked out by hand. ' No horse digger 
has yet been found that will handle the 
green tops without leaving too many 
potatoes covered in the soil. 
The crop is shipped in double head, 
eleven peck barrels packed tight with a 
heading press, as they would be so 
skinned and bruised as to be almost un¬ 
salable in sacks. Chain belt graders are 
coming into quite general use. 
Three sizes or grades are made—No. 
Ts, No. 2 s and No. 3's or culls. It only 
pays to ship the culls with the earlier 
crops and later they are kept for fall 
plantings or stock feed. Yields have 
ranged from 120 bbls. per acre to not 
enough to pay for digging, and prices 
for No. i's from $8.00 per barrel in 
Northern markets down to $3.00. Forty 
barrels per acre is considered an aver¬ 
age yield and as it costs $80 to $100 to 
grow and ship an acre you can figure 
for yourselves what the average net 
account sales should be to give a fail- 
profit. I have cleared as high as $150 
per acre on part of a crop, but one year 
after paying for fertilizer, seed and 
barrels, I had to turn all my pockets 
inside out to find the change for grow¬ 
ing and digging the crop. 
