The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1912-06-20

! gear in order to plant thickly
enough The size of the cells to use
large medium or small, will depend
on the size of the pea, with the New
Era variety the medium will drop
J about two peas to the cell on the
average which gives about the right
thickness. 4 good method of plant
ing practiced aAthis station is to use
a common gram drill, stopping up
part of the grain cups so as to
leave the rows about three feet apart,
setting the drill to sow about two
bushels of wheat to the acre. About
twenty pounds of seed are required
per acre. The peas should be plant
ed two or three inches deep in mel
low soil.
Cow peas should not be planted
until the soil is thoroughly warmed
up and all danger of periods of cold
weather has passed. The results OF
three years tests at this station show
that the best time to plant is from
May % to June 10, or about two or
three weeks later than the regular
corn planting time.
Cow peas should be harvested be-
fore heavy frost or as soon as most
OF the pods are brown and the larger
proportion Of the seed ripe. Ii left
very long the early pods become YER
brittle and more Of the seed is lost
in harvesting and handling
4 method of harvesting COW peas
at this station is to cut the vines
close to the ground with n corn knife
and roll two rows together. The vines
after lying in the windrow for day
or two should be placed in shocks
and allowed to cure. The peas may
be threshed directly as hauled from
the field or they may be shocked and
threshed later. This method of har-
vcsting is slow tone man should har-
vest and shock by hand One-half acre
per day., and is not always practical
BILE on large scale, because of the
scarcity of labor. If plenty of labor
can be secured at reasonable prices,
and there is an average crop of cow
peas, it will give more satisfactory
results than harvesting by machin-
cry las much less seed is lost.
The best method of thrcshing for
a few acres is with the fail, and un-
less it is impossible to get help or
unless it is impossible to get help or
unless enough cowpcas are raised in
the ncighborhOOd to pay to buy a
cOwpca huller or to buy and fit up
a cOwpca attachment to the ordinary
thrcshing machine, it will pay to fail
cut the peas. even If one has as
nuch as 80 or 40 acres, for it can
be done at cost Of from 10 to %
cents per bushel, with less than 10
per cent cracked, while many thrcsh-
ing machines crack over 80 per cent
At this station we have used the bean
thresher adjustment to the Avery
separator. This adjustment reduces
the speed Of the cylinder and at the
same time maintains the speed of the
rest Of the machine. To accomplish
this the speed Of the engine Is re-
duced SO as to turn the cylinder at
the rate of 500 revolutions per min
ute. THE usual rate for threshing
wheat or oats is 1000 or 1900 revo-
lutiOns per minute.) In order not to
reduce the rate OF movement OF tn .
rest Of the machine II is necessary u
increase the size of the pullcys that
run the feeder, tanning riddles.
, cleaning pans and wind stacker. Thr
rullcys may be changed as follow /.
Feeder from ! IL inches to ~
inches: crank shaft. which runs The
riddles. sha kcr. grain pans. cte. from
> To L. inches: wind stacker frrm !,
To- - inches By these adju~im1 j,
the speed of the separator except 'he
| cylinder. MAS maintained Tho
| Florida Grower