35a 
March 8, 
THIS RURAb NEW-YORKER 
Potato Growing in Virginia. 
I have a piece of good limestone land 
which I have farmed in potatoes for three 
successive years with practically no re¬ 
sults. Last year the potatoes started 
nicely and about the time they should be¬ 
gin to bloom, they turned brown and we 
got no potatoes. Have used good seed and 
manured the ground well, but have used 
no commercial fertilizer. Would you ad¬ 
vise another trial on the same ground, if 
so how would you treat it? J. o. s. 
Ans. —No, I would certainly not 
plant the same ground in potatoes. 
Constant repetition of the same crop on 
the land is as bad in vegetable growing 
as in general farming. The best prep¬ 
aration for potatoes is to have a green 
Winter crop on the land to turn under. 
Even rye will be better than nothing, 
but a clover sod is better. Then to get 
clean potatoes, clear of scab fungus, the 
slightly acid conditions produced by 
turning under a green growth favors 
clean potatoes. I never use manure on 
Irish potatoes, for I can always grow a 
cleaner and better crop from properly 
compounded fertilizer. The manure 
will give you a rank growth of tops, 
but lacks the phosphoric acid and potash 
essential to making the tubers. Then, 
too, you failed to spray the potatoes 
with Bordeaux mixture, and you had 
blight and the tops turned brown. 
Spraying is essential to the maintenance 
of healthy tops, and unless you have 
healthy tops you cannot get potatoes, 
for they are formed from the starch 
made through the agency of the green 
matter in the leaves, and phosphorus 
and potassium are essential in the for¬ 
mation and storing of starch by the 
green granules in the leaves. I make 
the Bordeaux mixture for potatoes on 
the 5-5-50 formula. That is, I slake 
in a cask five pounds of fresh lime and 
then add water enough to make it 25 
gallons. In another cask I suspend five 
pounds of copper sulphate in hot water 
to dissolve in a sack. Then make this 
25 gallons. Then pour the two together 
into a third cask, stirring all the time 
to mix well. Then strain into the 
sprayer and it is ready for immediate 
use. When the beetles appear, add one 
pound of lead arsenate to 50 gallons of 
the mixture and spray to destroy them. 
The spraying with Bordeaux mixture 
must begin as soon as the potatoes are 
well up to a stand and repeated every 
ten days, three or four applications. 
As a fertilizer the following, mixture 
is popular in the trucking district of 
the South: Acid phosphate, 900 pounds; 
nitrate of soda, 100 pounds; cotton seed 
meal, 600 pounds, and sulphate of pot¬ 
ash, 400 pounds—to make a ton. The 
growers of early potatoes in the South 
Atlantic region will use from 1,000 to 
1,500 pounds of this an acre. The lijlit 
soils of the coast region are better 
adapted to potatoes than your lime¬ 
stone soil, but you can grow them with 
the proper treatment. I make the rows 
two and a half feet apart, drop pota¬ 
toes cut to two eyes every 15 inches, 
and cover with a furrow from each side. 
Then just before they come up I har¬ 
row the ridges down level and cultivate 
clean and slightly ridge up at last work¬ 
ing. w. F. M. 
The Question of “ Fillers.” 
What crops shall we use for fillers in 
the orchards? This one of the most im¬ 
portant questions, if not the most im¬ 
portant, that faces the fruit grower to¬ 
day. There are a great many varieties 
of fruit as well as vegetables that we 
can use and do use, but is it a paying 
proposition? No, I will say it is not 
with a great many fillers we use. Let 
us take the apple orchard; set the trees 
30x30, 35x35 or even 40x40, as they are 
set in some States, but seldom in ours, 
as we grow more of the Summer and 
Fall varieties and they never grow as 
large and branch off as far as the Win¬ 
ter varieties do. Therefore 30x30 is a 
good distance for us to set. After the 
tree is set in the Spring there should not 
be any crop planted closer than five 
feet on either side of the tree; then 
every year until the sixth year you 
should move one foot farther away 
from the tree. I would like to say one 
word to the readers; that by moving 
away one foot each year does not add 
plant food to the tree; plant food should 
be added from the bags, barnyards, 
cover crops, and better still, from all 
three. When using peach or apple trees 
for fillers (early bearing varieties of 
apples) some growers set from two to 
three times as many fillers as they set 
in their first planting, but do they apply 
plant food accordingly? My experience 
is they do not. Therefore when the 
trees are five or seven years of age and 
should begin to bear some fruit, they 
are about the size of a fair four-year- 
old tree. Then what does the grower 
say if anyone tells him his trees are 
small and that his fillers are hurting the 
permanent trees, that are supposed to 
stand for 50 years? He will say the 
nurseryman and also some farm papers 
tell him to use trees for fillers and he 
is going by what they say, for this is 
his first attempt at growing an orchard. 
You can apply the same rule to the 
peach orchard as the apple. I think 18x 
18 is close enough and plenty far enough 
apart to set peaches. 
By using peach trees for fillers in the 
peach orchard 3 'ou often set the trees 
back one and two years. By what I 
have seen you can’t use too much plant 
food the first two years in the peach 
orchard where they are set 18x18. 
Therefore where would your fillers get 
their food, unless they stole it from the 
permanent trees that are to stand for 
15 years? Again I believe you should 
apply plant food from bags, barnyards 
and cover crops, on your peach orchard 
for the first two years. 
Readers will ask “What shall we use 
as fillers for the orchard? We cannot 
afford to let that ground lie idle from 
three to seven years.” I would say un¬ 
less you use more plant food than I 
have ever seen used, never set trees or 
small fruits for fillers, use vegetables or 
hay crops. The vegetables you can use 
and that will also add plant food to 
your trees are tomatoes, melons, beans, 
cabbage, potatoes, and almost any of the 
vegetables that are taken off of the 
ground the year they are planted. Then 
sow a cover crop of Crimson clover, 
rye and vetch, or if on very poor soil a 
good mixture is rye, vetch and turnips. 
If you grow rye sow Crimson clover 
with it as a cover crop, or if you grow 
buckwheat for grain also use your cover 
crop, and that will add to what your 
hay and grain takes off. To sum up, I 
would say don’t use trees as fillers un¬ 
less it is impossible to use vegetables, 
hay, grain or some other crop that 
dies in one year. If you must use trees 
use plenty of available plant food and 
dig out from peaches when they are six 
years old and from apples at 10 years. 
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TRADE MARK 
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EDISON 
PULVERIZED 
LIMESTONE 
Nature’s Crop Producer 
Made from the purest Crystaline White 
Limestone obtainable. 
Pulverized like flour; owing to its fine¬ 
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Not being Caustic, can be applied at 
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The best and cheapest form of Lime 
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Especially recommended for Alfalfa. 
Sustains fertility and increases-pro¬ 
ductiveness of the soil. 
For Sample, Booklet, Price, etc., address 
Edison Portland Cement Co. 
Stewartsville, N. J. 
GROUND LIMESTONE 
FOR SOIL IMPROVEMENT 
Alfalfa and Clover MUST have it 
ANALYSIS GUARANTEED 
Write for circulars ORDER EARLY 
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DANBURY, CONN. 
Save 25% on Your Fertilizer Bills 
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Pure Canada Hardwood Ashes 
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References: Duns or Brudstreets or Rank of Hamilton, Lucknow 
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Established 16 Years 
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Plant Food—Spring, 1913 
FERTILIZE** 
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