Transplanting machinery (Figs. 230, S43, S71).
Sweet-potatoes, tomatoes and tobacco are the crops most extensively planted by machinery at the present time. The feasibility of handling cab bage by machinery is attracting the attention of growers, because of the difficulty of securing suffi cient hand labor to transplant the extensive acre age of this crop now grown in the trucking region of the Atlantic coast. Up to the present, however, the work of transplanting the immense numbers of cabbage plants annually produced has all been done by hand, as is also the case with onions and beets which have been subjected to this type of cultivation. It is probable that a machine-trans planter will never be adapted to the growing of beets or onions because of the limited space be tween the individual plants, and the proximity of the rows in which they are set ; but where the space between the individual plants is eighteen inches, and the distance between the rows suffi cient to allow of cultivation by horse-power, as in the case of cabbage, sweet-potatoes, tobacco, toma toes and peppers, it is perfectly feasible to use a machine to assist in transplanting these crops.
Truck-growing has reached the point where it is necessary to take advantage of every opportunity to reduce the cost of production. The use of the mechanical transplanter is one of the factors which is bound to play an important part in reduc ing the cost of producing cabbage. It will un doubtedly do for cabbage what it has already done for sweet-potatoes and tobacco. Celery, while grown at sufficient distance between the rows to admit of using a transplanter, is set so closely in the rows that it is probable that it will never be feasible to use this implement for transplanting the crop. In fact, many of the plants which require special attention at transplanting time and are more or less exacting in regard to handling will always have to be transplanted by hand. It should be perfectly feasible to handle sugar-cane and cassava with the transplanting-machines.