124 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
inches above the furrow bottoms. When 
the plant is laid by, the seed piece is of¬ 
ten six or eight inches above the furrow 
bottoms, and covered with five or six 
inches of earth. Extreme ridging is not 
a theory at Hastings. 
I use an Improved Robbins potato 
planter, and prefer it to the Aspinwall, 
because when a piece gets crushed by 
the machinery it can be replaced; and 
with a good man on behind there need 
be no skips. But if the tender is careless 
or incompetent, the Aspinwall will do 
better work. It plants about ninety- 
five per cent, correctly, and takes only 
one man. I have used both machines. 
Cultivation is largely done with riding 
disc cultivators—an ideal tool in ridge 
work and in trash. We rig them with 
a sixteen and twenty inch disc on a side, 
and set them either to stir the ridge sides 
or to throw earth over the whole ridge. 
I use a Hallock weeder to stir the ridge 
tops until the vines are six inches high. 
Hand hoeing in a wet season costs me 
perhaps 25 cents per acre. 
The furrows on each side of the ridges 
are kept constantly open at the ends, so 
that rain water need not stand in them. 
I go over these outlets after every culti¬ 
vation and after every hard rain. My 
crop gets seven or eight cultivations at 
least. 
If the plants are only two or three 
inches high, and a freeze threatens, the 
disc is used to cover the vines, which are 
left to grow out again of their own ac¬ 
cord. If the plants are larger, they are 
often uncovered by hand. I doubt 
whether covering six-inch plants pays. 
The frosted-back plants seem to catch up 
before the end of the season. Covering 
small plants certainly pays. 
Bacterial blight bothers in new land, 
sometimes badly. Early blight appear¬ 
ed very generally this year. No potato 
bugs bother as yet. The greatest danger 
is wet rot. 
The bulk of the planting is in late 
January, the digging in early May. The 
crop is then half to two-thirds grown, 
otherwise the yields would be unusual. 
DIGGING. 
Digging is usually done with hooks; 
the ridge is barred off, leaving only a 
balk to handle. Three rows of potatoes 
are thrown together, making a heap 
row. Labor costs $1.25 a day during 
harvest and there is not enough of it. 
We ship on a falling market and every¬ 
body wants to rush his crop off at once. 
All the surrounding towns are ransacked 
for extra teams and men. 
Two farmers use the Dowden digger, 
a four-horse machine. I have tried the 
Dowden, the Hoover, the Aspinwall and 
the Hallock. I do not care for any of 
them if I can get enough men. Our 
conditions in every way are almost too 
extreme for standard machines. 
After digging, if the sun is at all hot, 
the potato should be immediately bar¬ 
relled ; the sun ruins them quickly. They 
are sorted into firsts, seconds and culls, 
and the first two sizes are shipped. Sort¬ 
ing is a hard job to get well done. I 
have a special boss for this work. The 
firsts are picked up, then the seconds. 
No darkey seems able to pick up both 
at the same time and keep them distinct. 
I like a half-bushel patent stave basket 
and a pail bail for this work. Barrels of 
firsts are placed in one row and barrels 
of seconds in another, so there will be 
no mismarking, and the hands can see 
where the last unfilled barrel of each sort 
is. When a barrel is headed and sten- 
