Some Practical Suggestions / For a Late Season.
...Two quick motions with a flat trowel, followed by a kneading of the fist beside the plant to pack the soil, will set a cabbage or tomato plant as successfully as any amount of extra pottering and fussing... ... Strawberry plants set in an opening in the earth made by thrusting down a spade and fixed by another thrust to close the aperture, do just as well as with the most careful spreading of the roots over a cone of fine soil, and the horse transplanting machines, which put in two thousand plants in an hour, give as good results as the most careful slow puttering with trowel at the rate of 40 or less an hour...
— communication from L. B. Pierce, Summit County, O. May 10., titled “Some Practical Suggestions. For a Late Season.” in The Country Gentleman (May 27, 1909) : 526 U Michigan copy/scan (via google books) : link
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L. B. Pierce, a frequent contributor of well-written, practical notes to The Country Gentleman, has previously appeared in these posts — that all skilled work is puttering — link .