"The Hungarian peasantry always make their tobacco beds against the south ends of their houses. These beds are enclosed by hurdles two feet high, at the bottom of which stones are laid, and on the outside of these, thorns are thickly placed, to exclude the moles. They fill this enclosure to the height of eighteen inches with fresh, coarse manure, which they press closely by beating as they throw it on; covering with finely pulverized earth mixed with dung of the preceding year that had become soil. They do not regulate their time of sowing either by the moon, month, the season, but by the holy week of the passing year; it is on Good Friday that all of their beds are sown, and although this day may vary nearly one month in different years, they are faithful to their thermometer—their piety not permitting them to know any other. To the mysterious influence of the day, without regard to the season, they ascribe their success and they generally succeed."
Bickinson gives an account of the manner of making the plant bed in the East Indian Archipelago. He says:
"Not far from us is a hut inhabited by two natives, who are engaged in cultivating tobacco. Their ladangs, or gardens, are merely places of an acre or less, where the thick forest has been partially destroyed by fire, and the seed is sown in the regular spaces between the stumps."
After making the plant bed and tending through the weeding season, the next step to be taken is the
CHOICE OF GROUND
for the tobacco fields. Tobacco, unlike any other plant, readily adapts itself to soil and climate. The effect produced upon the plant may be seen in comparing the tobacco of Holland and France, the one raised upon low, damp ground, the other on a sandy loam. The early growers of the plant in Virginia, were very particular in the selection of soil for the plant. The lands which they found best adapted were the light red, or chocolate-colored mountain lands, the light black mountain soil in the coves of the mountains, and the richest low grounds.
Tatham says: "The condition of soil of which the planters make choice, is that in which nature presents it when it is first disrobed of the woods with which it is naturally clothed throughout every part of the country; hence in the parts where this culture prevails, this is termed new ground, which may be there considered as synonymous with tobacco ground. Thus the planter is continually cutting down new ground, and every successive spring presents an additional field, or opening of tobacco (for it is not necessary to put much fence round that kind of crop); and to procure this new ground you will observe him clearing the woods from the sides of the steepest hills, which afford a suitable soil; for a Virginian never thinks of reinstating or manuring his land with economy until he can find no more new land to exhaust, or wear out as he calls it; and, besides, the tobacco which is produced from manured or cow-penned land, is only considered, in ordinary, to be a crop of second quality. It will hence be perceived, (and more particularly when it is known that the earth must be continually worked to make a good crop of tobacco, without even regarding the heat of the sun, or the torrent of sudden showers,) that, however lucrative this kind of culture may be in respect to the intermediate profits, there is a considerable drawback in the waste of soil."[72]
In the Connecticut valley where tobacco is grown for wrapping purposes, the selection of soil will depend upon the color of leaf in demand (as the soil as well as the fertilizers determine in a measure the color and texture of the tobacco). If the grower wishes to obtain dark colored tobacco then the soil selected should be a dark loam; on the other hand, if a light colored wrapper is desired he selects a light loam, and with the application of proper fertilizers the proper color will be obtained.
The tobacco plant flourishes well either on high or low ground, providing the soil be dry and free from stones, which are a source of annoyance during the cultivation of the plants and especially in harvesting. When grown on very low ground the plants should be "set" early, so as to harvest before early frosts. The plant may be cultivated on such soil in almost any part of the valley excepting only near the sound, or other body of salt water, the effect produced by planting tobacco too near the sea, more especially in Connecticut, being injurious to the leaf, which is apt to be thick and unfit for a cigar wrapper. In some countries, however, the leaf grown near salt water is equal in color and texture to any grown in the interior. But generally the plant obtains its finest form and quality of leaf—whether in the islands of the ocean, on the great prairies of the west, amid the sands of Arabia, on the mountains of Syria, or along the dykes of Holland—on lands bordering the largest rivers. This is true of the tobacco lands of Connecticut, Kentucky, Virginia, Florida, Brazil, Venezuela, and Paraguay, as well as of those in the islands of Cuba and St. Domingo, where the rivers flow to the southern coast from the mountains which lie to the north. It must not be imagined from this that tobacco can not be successfully cultivated at a distance from valleys enriched by large and overflowing rivers. Some of the finest tobacco grown in Connecticut is grown in counties some distance from the river that gives name to our state.
When possible, select that kind of soil for the tobacco field that will produce the color and texture of leaf desired. For Connecticut seed leaf a light moist loam is the proper soil. The same field can be used a number of seasons in succession; the result will be a much finer leaf than will come from selecting a new field each year. The early planters of tobacco in Virginia soon ruined their fields by failing to manure them. In Maryland the soil best adapted for the growth of tobacco is a light, friable soil, or what is commonly called a sandy loam, not too flat, but of a rolling, undulating surface, and not liable to overflow in excessive rains. New land is far better than old.