Planting usually begins in March and continues until September, sometimes later, and the cane ripens one year from the following December.
Growing cane should be watered every seven days, and the amount of water used for this purpose is enormous. For example: a plantation producing thirty-five thousand tons of sugar per annum needs twice as much water per day as the city of San Francisco.
The appearance of growing cane is much like that of Indian corn. The whole field area is covered with a dense, jungle-like vegetation of brilliant green. The leaves are long and narrow and hang in graceful curves. The cane grows so thick that it is almost impossible to crawl through it, and so seldom do the sun’s rays penetrate to the ground that rapid evaporation of the irrigation water cannot take place, hence the cane gets the full benefit of the moisture.
In certain varieties of cane, the great weight of the juice in the stalks causes them to bend, droop and take fantastic shapes. Sometimes they lie on the ground with the ends turned upward, and in fields where the stalks grow to a length of twenty-four feet, the average height of the tops above the ground is not over twelve feet. In other kinds the stalks stand straight up to a height of from eight to fourteen feet.
The production of cane per acre varies in different countries and in different parts of the same country, according to the character of the soil, climatic conditions, care and attention, use of fertilizer and amount of rainfall or irrigation. In Hawaii it ranges from twenty to eighty-five tons, and the amount of sugar obtained per acre runs from two and one-half tons to twelve tons, the average being about five tons.
Broadly speaking, lack of a normal amount of cane per acre, lack of sugar in the cane, or the prevalence of disease, is primarily due to an unsanitary or unsuitable condition of the soil. This can usually be corrected by proper cultural methods, such as adequate aeration of the soil, the turning under of the cane tops and leaves, application of lime and suitable combinations of fertilizing ingredients. Fundamentally, cane requires a well-aerated, moist, alkaline soil and a fertilizer in which the nitrogen content is high and in excess of the potash and phosphoric acid. It is found that nitrate of soda, when applied alone or in combination with potash and phosphoric acid, produces a very strong growth. The proper sanitation of the soil tends to promote the beneficial bacterial action so essential to the growth of the cane.
IRRIGATION DITCH—SHOWING TUNNEL
IRRIGATION DITCH