328 
«THE> RURAL NEW-YORKER 
THE STORY OF A CANADIAN FARM. 
The Round of the Seasons. 
Part III. 
Treatment for the Crop. —Part of 
this field, about two acres, had been 
cropped continuously for four years 
without seeding down. Two crops of 
corn had been grown, one of potatoes 
and one of oats, with a dressing of ma¬ 
nure for the first crop of corn and for 
the potatoes. These three “hoed’' crops 
had been grown in succession in order 
to rid the land of quack grass. This 
was accomplished by thorough clean cul¬ 
ture, and by sowing buckwheat broad¬ 
cast among the corn just before the last 
cultivation of that crop. The remainder 
of this 6j4-acre field was in sod, clover 
and Timothy, with a narrow strip where 
a patch of sweet corn and a few late 
potatoes had been planted in 1908. This 
strip and the portion in grass had re¬ 
ceived a dressing ot manure in the Win¬ 
ter of 1907. The whole piece was plowed 
in November, 1908. In the Spring, as 
soon as it had dried enough to be 
worked, it was gone over with a spring- 
tooth harrow, given another stroke with 
the same harrow just before planting. 
A planter with fertilizer attachment was 
used to do the work, dropping the seed 
in rows 34 inches apart, with 14 inches 
between the seed pieces. A medium- 
grade potato fertilizer was used on all 
but one acre of the piece—using 400 
pounds per acre. On the remaining acre 
1,000 pounds of a high-grade brand was 
applied. Good-sized potatoes were used 
for seed, cutting to two eyes.. These 
were home-grown, clean and free from 
rust and scab. We aimed to plant fresh¬ 
ly cut seed, but the rain stopped us one 
day with 15 bushels of cut potatoes on 
hand. This was kept in bags in a shady 
place, but on account of the continued 
wet weather was not planted for two 
weeks. I was a little shy of these some¬ 
what shriveled sets but everyone else 
said it would come all right, so we plant¬ 
ed it at last. Most of it came up, al¬ 
though there were some missing hills 
and many small weak stalks as a result 
of lost vitality in the seed. In cutting, 
a piece would occasionally be found with 
no eyes apparent; these were thrown 
one side for feeding. As an experiment 
I planted a dozen of these “blind” sets 
in a hill by themselves. On digging 
them up two weeks later I was surprised 
to find that every piece had started one 
or more-good ■strong sprouts from eyes 
which would not be noticed by a casual 
observer. 
Cultivation. —The first two cultiva¬ 
tions were done with a smoothing har¬ 
row—the teeth slanted back pretty well 
so that the frame of the harrow leveled 
down the ridges left by the covering 
disks of the planter. This harrowing 
was done lengthwise of the rows. We 
tried running the other way, just as the 
potatoes began to come up. but found 
that some of the sets were being pulled 
out. The first harrowing was done a 
week or 10 days after planting—choos¬ 
ing if possible a dry hot day. On such 
a day, millions of weeds just starting to 
grow can be killed by stirring the •soil 
and exposing them to the heat of the 
sun. Except for an occasional thistle 
and a few spots of quack—which were 
attended to with a hoe later on—the field 
was remarkably clean when the potatoes 
came up. Walking cultivators were now 
used as often as the soil became crusted, 
and until the tops became so large that 
they prevented further passage between 
the rows. A little soil was thrown to¬ 
ward the potatoes, but the hills were 
kept flat. The planter had been set to 
drop the seed as deeply as possible, 
which we consider better practice on our 
soil than ■shallow planting and hilling 
afterward. Part of the field, however, 
was somewhat stony, ■so that shallow 
planting here could not be avoided. 
Spraying was done with a hand pump 
mounted on a barrel. A one-horse wagon 
was used to carry the outfit—a two¬ 
wheeled cart would have been better, 
because easier to turn at the ends of the 
rows.- The pump is fitted with two 
lengths of hose, each hose carrying a 
cluster nozzle. One man drove the horse 
and pumped while another directed the 
hose. Two rows could be sprayed at a 
time in this way where the tops were 
not too large. At the last spraying, when 
the tops nearly met between the rows 
we found it necessary to turn both hose 
on a single row in order to do good 
work. This outfit is satisfactory for a 
small field, but where more than three 
or four acres are grown I think it would 
pay to use a power -sprayer, covering 
four or more rows at a time. One man 
can then do the work and do it more 
quickly. There is probably also a saving- 
in material in using a spramotor. It is 
sometimes difficult to keep up the pres¬ 
sure with a hand pump, which means a 
coarser spray in order to cover the vines. 
With the high pressure possible from a 
spramotor the vines are covered by a 
fine mist which clings to them like dew. 
We sprayed our potatoes three times, 
first time with Bordeaux and Paris 
green, as bugs appeared; second time 
same mixture, two weeks later; third 
time Bordeaux alone toward the end of 
August, and about three weeks after the 
■second application. Most of the experi¬ 
ment stations recommend one-half pound 
of Paris green to 40 gallons water (or 
Bordeaux Mixture). We find that in or¬ 
der to do effective work with our friends 
from Colorado we are obliged to use 
from V / 2 to two pounds Paris green to 
40 gallons water. I am convinced that 
we are using too much, but so far have 
been unable to kill the bugs with less. 
Before another spraying season comes 
around I intend to find out where our 
trouble lies. There was no blight in this 
section last year, many fields of potatoes 
showing green tops after the middle of 
October, in sheltered places where the 
frost had not touched them. Colorado 
and flea beetles, however, were very nu¬ 
merous. Tip-burn was also noticed to a 
considerable extent, especially on early 
fields and where lack of cultivation led 
to loss of moisture. 
The Crop.— Digging began early in 
October, but was not finished until near¬ 
ly the end of that month. Many of the 
potatoes were sold and delivered in 
small quantities in a neighboring town, 
which took considerable time, then rainy 
days intervened, roots had to be pulled 
and put in, strawberries weeded and 
trimmed, so I don’t want the reader to 
get the impression that we took nearly 
a month to dig Cy]/ 2 acres of potatoes 
We used a two-horse digger which did 
fine work, not only leaving all of the 
potatoes on top of the ground, but 
throwing out quack roots, where a few 
small patches of this weed still survived, 
as well as thistles and all deep-rooted 
plants which remained in the potato 
rows. Where the tops were green the 
tubers retained their hold until shaken 
off by hand, but this was a short job. 
and only occurred in portions of the field 
which had escaped frost. The vines were 
finally raked up and drawn away to the 
strawberry patch where they were used 
as a mulch, leaving the potato ground 
clean and in fine condition for Spring 
grain which will be sown without plow¬ 
ing—a ‘spring-tooth or disk harrow being 
all the tool necessary to work up a good 
seed bed. The potato is a deep feeder, 
leaving a good supply of plant food in 
the surface soil set free by the inter¬ 
tillage necessary to grow the crop, and 
just where it is wanted for the more 
shallow feeding grains and grasses. At 
the ■same time the compactness of the 
subsoil and the fineness of the seedbed 
are just the conditions essential for 
grass and clover seeding. The yield of 
potatoes was very satisfactory, all things 
considered. We harvested 1,450 bushels 
of fine, clean, marketable tubers, with 
perhaps 100 bushels more of small ones 
which we are feeding to the cows. They 
are all one variety, Rural New-Yorker. 
Only a few were over large, not more 
than a dozen in the whole field weighing 
over two pounds each, but many weighed 
from a pound to V / 2 pound each. The 
poorest yield came from that two acres 
which had been cropped continuously for 
four seasons! This was largely due, no 
doubt, to lack of humus in that ‘soil, for 
humus is very essential as a holder of 
water—as well as a reservoir of fertility 
—and therefore especially necessary in a 
dry season. We did not measure these 
separately, but estimated a yield of about 
150 bushels per acre on this part of the 
field. From the measured acre upon 
which \ve used 1,000 pounds high-grade 
potato fertilizer—part in the drills and 
part broadcast—we dug 310 bushels. 
These were weighed as they came from 
the field. In a few spots in other parts 
of the field the yield seemed equally as 
good, but as a whole this acre surpassed 
any other. The rows in this measured 
acre ran north and south, crossing- the 
strips which had been in sweet corn and 
potatoes the previous year. In digging 
we could tell in an instant when we had 
come to the old potato ground; the po¬ 
tatoes were considerably smaller here, 
making quite an appreciable difference 
in the yield from the whole acre. That 
is a pretty convincing argument that po¬ 
tatoes should not follow potatoes. Where 
the sweet corn grew—and there was not a 
heavy crop of it—the yield of tubers was 
as good as in any part of the field. On 
a ‘shaly knob, where the soil is very shal¬ 
low, we were surprised to find a good 
number of exceptionally large potatoes. 
The vines here also remained green to 
the middle of October. Somehow the 
moisture must have worked up through 
this slatestone ledge, for the soil is not 
over six inches deep and of a very loose 
character. _c. s. moore, 
“For the Land’s Sake, use Bowker’s 
Fertilizers; they enrich the earth and 
those who till it.”—Adv. 
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