If domestic manures are applied, use about twelve cords to the acre, composting before plowing under. As soon as spread, plow the field and see that all of the manure is covered. If tobacco stems are used, plow in from three to five tons to the acre, all of them at once, or a part in the fall and the remainder in the spring. If Peruvian guano is applied, sow on about three hundred pounds to the acre in connection with the domestic manure. Fish guano should be composted before sowing, either with loam or manure, and when used on light soil is a very good fertilizer, producing a light, thin leaf. After the tobacco field is harrowed it is ready for the ridger, which makes the hills and gathers together all of the loose manure on the surface, and collects it in the ridges. Where a ridger is not used, work off the rows from three and one half to four feet apart, or even wider than this. In the Connecticut valley the field is marked and hilled so as to give about 6000 hills to the acre. This will be a sufficient number if the growth is likely to be large. Where a ridger is used, manure can not be dropped in the hill and in many respects it is well not to do so, as the plants are liable to be blown over during a storm—not standing as firmly in the hills as plants when no manure is used in the hills. If the hills are to be made with the hoe, avoid all stones, bits of turf and grass in making them, and select only the fresh earth—gently patting the top of the hill with the hoe. New made hills are better than old, but it will make but little difference unless the soil is very dry at the time of transplanting.
A Tobacco Ridger.
The following description of the manner of preparing the tobacco field in Virginia by the old planters is quite interesting, and gives some idea of the amount of labor to be performed on the tobacco plantation:—
"There are two distinct and separate methods of preparing the tobacco ground: the one is applicable to the preparation of new and uncultivated lands, such as are in a state of nature, and require to be cleared of the heavy timber and other productions with which Providence has stocked them; and the other method is designed to meliorate and revive lands of good foundation, which have been heretofore cultivated, and, in some measure, exhausted by the calls of agriculture and evaporation.
"The process of preparing new lands begins as early in the winter as the housing and managing the antecedent crop will permit, by grabbing the undergrowth with a mattock; felling the timber with a poll-axe;[73] lopping off the tops, and cutting the bodies into lengths of about eleven feet, which is about the customary length of an American fence rail, in what is called a worm or panel fence.[74] During this part of the process the negro women, boys, and weaker laborers, are employed in piling or throwing the brush-wood, roots, and small wood, into heaps to be burned; and after such logs or stocks are selected as are suitable to be malled into rails, make clapboards, or answer for other more particular occasions of the planter, the remaining logs are rolled into heaps by means of hand-spikes and skids; but the Pennsylvania and German farmers, who are more conversant with animal powers than the Virginians, save much of this labor by the use of a pair of horses with a half sledge, or a pair of truck wheels.
"The burning of this brush-wood, and the log piles, is a business for all hands after working hours; and as nightly revels are peculiar to the African constitution, this part of the labor proves often a very late employment, which affords many scenes of rustic mirth. When this process has cleared the land of its various natural incumbrances (to attain which end is very expensive and laborious), the next part of the process is that of the hoe; for the plough is an implement which is rarely used in new lands when they are either designed for tobacco or meadow. There are three kinds of the hoe which are applied to this tillage: the first is what is termed the sprouting hoe, which is a smaller species of mattock that serves to break up any particular hard part of the ground, to grub up any smaller sized grubs which the mattock or grubbing hoe may have omitted, to remove small stones and other partial impediments to the next process. The narrow or hilling hoe follows the operation of the sprouting hoe. It is generally from six to eight inches wide, and ten or twelve in the length of the blade, according to the strength of the person who is to use it; the blade is thin, and by means of a movable wedge which is driven into the eye of the hoe, it can be set more or less digging (as it is termed), that is, on a greater or less angle with the helve, at pleasure. In this respect there are few instances where the American blacksmith is not employed to alter the eye of an English-made hoe before it is fit for use; the industrious and truly useful merchants of Glasgow have paid more minute attention to this circumstance.
