HINTS ON RAISING FARM CROPS 53 
The Rural New Yorker, Burbank and Carman 
are popular late varieties. 
Potatoes are planted at the rate of from 12 
to 15 bushels to the acre. They are planted 
in rows about three feet apart, and about 
twelve to sixteen inches apart in the rows. 
In the sections where they are raised on a 
large scale, regular potato planters are used, 
where an extra hopper is provided for com¬ 
mercial fertilizer. In some of these eastern 
sections, such as in Aroostook County, Maine, 
this commercial fertilizer is often applied as 
heavy as one ton to the acre. Manure is more 
generally used in other parts of the country, 
being applied in the winter, or early spring. 
During the growing season, the potatoes 
should be cultivated frequently to keep down 
weeds and to conserve moisture. It is a gen¬ 
eral custom in this country to “hill" the po¬ 
tatoes, after they have made good growth. 
This consists of throwing the soil up against 
the potatoes on each side. When the vines 
commence to die, it is about time to dig the 
potatoes. In the regular potato sections, ma¬ 
chine diggers are employed. These dig¬ 
gers throw up the soil in the potato rows, and 
the potatoes are easily exposed to the surface 
of the ground, where they can be quickly har¬ 
vested. However, in sections where potato 
raising is not a specialty, the potato fork is 
the usual tool used in harvesting the crop. 
There are a few common insect pests and 
diseases that annually exact a heavy toll from 
the potato crop. Early and late blight, scab 
and rot are the usual diseases, while the Colo- 
