The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1911-02-10
Idaho Country Life

to depth of from four to six inches
We want to keep the land level, for
If we ridge at this stage, it will
lose a lot of moisture. We COM
menced killing up when the potatoes
needed moisture, by the use of a
wing-shovel pillow, but did not hill
them very high. The object in hill
ing is to keep the irrigation water
down below the surface of the pota-
toes. There is a whole lot in the
question of irrigating. We irrigate
potatoes to give them as much water
as they need and no more. In irri-
eating it is evident that the upper
end will get enough water before
the lower end does, and in order to
get uniform amount of water over
the whole field, we have got to get
water through quickly. If you turn
big head in, you will wash the soil
away. / order to get the water
through as quickly as possible, we
made a practice of dragging piece
of pipe agout four inches in diameter
and three feet long, fastened to the
back of the shovel pillow by means
of wires. In dragging the pipe
through in this manner, it made
smooth marks, something like cor
rugation. We used lath tubes for
irrigating and put water through the
tubes at about four inch pressure.
eve irrigated the potatoes right
after they were hilled up, just before
they bloomed. We used one tube
to every two corrugations. Our
second irrigation was about a week
after the first. We do not want to
check the growth of potatoes after
we start irrigating them. Keep about
the same amount of moisture on
them all the time.
after the first irrigation we want
ed to form dust mulch and went
through them up and also formed
a dust mulch. After we got through
irrigating the second time, we found
out they had made such an enormous
growth that we could not get through
to hill them any more. A week or
ten days after the second irrigation
we irrigated again.
1--WE found it good idea to run
over the potatoes with harrow be-
fore digging, on account of such a
rank growth of vine, which had a
tendency to clog the digger. We
used four-horse Hoover digger.
ut is hard to figure on the cost
of producing an acre of potatoes.
The following might be conservative:
eve figure that it cost us from
$4,000 to $500 per acre.
"2Oc to 25c on the cars, right
| close, per 100 cars.
&c to &c for picking.
LOG per hundred TO cut.
&c per mile for hauling first mile
and after that 1c per mile, one to
five miles, provided you have plenty
Of potatoes and plenty of cars to
put them right in.
"In planting potatoes in rows 645
feet long, it required so to Is pounds
of seed to the row. We had about
25 rows, and it took 100 pounds of
seed on this acre.
"Out of $50 sacks, 33 sacks went
through two inch screen.
I'VE started putting manure on
the ground in the spring, and that
may be questionable if it is quite
hard to irrigate. We went over our
ground number of times with a
harrow. A double action cut away
harrow is the greatest thing going to
pull manure under the ground We
had no trouble in corrugating man
urred ground.
The Delmany Challenge yielded
over 100 bushels heavier than the
White Peachblow' did. They were
a much better potato in that they
did not crack SO much, and were
more uniform in type.
1--WE planted our potatoes about
May 21st. Our first irrigation was
approximately the LIST of July. We
harvested the potatoes the gath day
of October.
I'm our irrigation We let the water |
run the first time about "a hours
and the next irrigations about - |
hours EACH
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