WAUPACA COUNTY REPUBLICAN

February 13, 1891

 

POTATO CULTURE, OLD AND NEW

The Aspinwall Potato Planter, the New Labor and Time Saving Invention.

 

            The excellent picture on this page represents quite a new claimant to public favor, and one that seems to win its way very thoroughly wherever it is tried.  The machine will plant from five to eight acres per day, and all work of marking, furrowing, dropping and covering is done in a single operation.  The planting can be varied in depth from three to nine inches, and the covering is uniform.  Instead of the dry earth on top, the coverers of the Planter draw upon the seed the moist or under earth, and the value of this is well known to all potato raisers, for nothing is more fatal to the starting of the seed than to cover it with dry earth.  The work is superior to hand planting.  The furrow being V-shaped, the seed must necessarily be dropped in the bottom in perfect line, and cultivation can be made early and close.

            The Planter is adjustable for planting either whole or cut seed, and will plant from ten to twenty-six inches apart.  At all these variable distances it drops the seed with absolute regularity. The distance of planting is exactly the same in each row.  A fertilizer attachment can be used, which deposits the fertilizer above the potato, just as a portion of the earth has fallen upon it; thus all chance for injury to seed is avoided.  The mechanical construction of the Planter is good.  The materials are of the best and it will last for many years.  There is cog gear and no fast motion.  Excepting the pole and hopper, the whole machine is made of steel and iron.  A corn-planter attachment is now made which will be wanted by many who purchase the potato planter.  Altogether, in its present high perfection, the Aspinwall Potato Planter is an implement few potato growers will care to do without; especially if they are raising the tubers to any great amount in this great potato belt of Wisconsin or any other favored spot in the United States and Canada.  Mention the Waupaca REPUBLICAN, and you can secure the catalogue of the makers, by addressing the Aspinwall Manufacturing Company, Three Rivers, Michigan.