Beans after Cotton.—This crop may be sown at any time during the month of November, the earlier the better. The beans may be either sown broadcast or dropped into the furrow, behind the native plough. The quantity of seed required is two and a half bushels. The land must be very moist, or an irregular germination of the seed will be the result. The crop receives the first watering thirty days after sowing, or immediately before flowering, and again when the beans have formed in the pod. Harvest will commence about the middle of April. Men, women, and boys pull the crop by hand, breaking the stalks close to the ground, sometimes uprooting them, but a small serrated hook is also used to cut the stalks. Six hands will reap one acre per day, and the payment is in kind, at the rate of one sheaf per thirty. The crop is then carted to the threshing-floor, spread out to dry, and threshed by the Norag; or, as modern implements are creeping into use, by a steam threshing machine made by one of the famous English firms.
This crop does not receive any manure, but requires a rich, heavy soil, when under favourable conditions a yield may be expected of from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels per acre—price per five bushels, 1 pound. Occasionally this crop is damaged by hot blasts—“Khamsin winds”—which shrivel the bean, especially if they occur when it is soft. We have also the pest of broomrape; and if badly infested by this weed, great destruction follows to the crop. Beans are the main feed of working bullocks, milch cows, and donkeys.
Catch crops, on land after beans.
Maize (summer).—Sown end of April, ready to be pulled after sixty days. This crop is consumed by the natives, who roast the cobs. Cost of raising one acre, 2 pounds 10 shillings, exclusive of rent. Gross value of crop may be approximately 10 pounds.
Water Melons.—Sown at the same date, ripe after eighty days. Cost of raising, 3 pounds 10 shillings. Probable value of the produce of an acre, 12 pounds. After these crops have been harvested the land is fallowed for three months. During the fallow it receives two or three ploughings, and is flooded with water to prepare it for sowing the cereal crops.
Egyptian Clover (Trifolium Alexandrinum).—After Cotton.—This crop may be termed the preserver of Egyptian agriculture, since, as previously alluded to, it provides pasturage for horses, cattle, sheep, camels, mules, and donkeys, for a period of seven months, and also taking into account its beneficial effects on the soil, restoring fertility by root residue containing nitrogen. Sown in the end of October amongst the standing cotton trees, the seed falls upon the newly irrigated soil and takes root, no covering being required. Sixty pounds of seed is sufficient for an acre. The first crop should be ready for pasturing at the beginning of January; second crop, seventy-five days; third crop, forty days; fourth crop, thirty-five days’ interval.
This variety is named “Miscowy,” and stands copious watering. The first and second crops contain about eighty per cent, of moisture. The third crop may be made into hay, and the fourth crop—part only—may be threshed to furnish seed. The gross weight of the four crops, cut green, may be estimated at thirty tons, or five tons of hay. The work-bullocks, cows, buffaloes, horses, etc., are tethered by a rope attached to their fore-legs and fixed to a peg driven into the ground, the cattlemen moving the animals forward as required. The cattle lie out at night while pasturing on the clover.
If the crop of clover is near a large town where dairymen require green pasture, the price per feddan, to be consumed on the land, may be put at 4 pounds, 3 pounds, 3 pounds 10 shillings, 3 pounds 10 shillings for the four crops, or a total of 14 pounds. Growers are sometimes troubled by attacks of cut-worms, which ravage the young shoots of clover; but flooding with water often destroys the pest. There is also the parasitic weed Dodder (Cuscuta Trifolii), which occasionally does damage to the crop. The cost of five bushels of clover seed varies from one pound 10 shillings to 3 pounds 10 shillings, according to supply and demand. The variety “Fachl” clover occupies a separate place in the rotation, and will be treated later.
Wheat.—Varieties: Common wheat, Bocchi, and Indian. The Bocchi, a white wheat, is extensively grown. The third, a reddish wheat, has recently been introduced from India, and gives good crops. Egyptian wheats are hard, but are deficient in albuminoids. Unfortunately, care is not taken in selecting the seed, and many samples are badly mixed with red and white varieties. The crop is sown on fallow land after clover and beans. The land, previous to sowing the seed, has received a watering. Fifteen to twenty days after, the seed—two and a half bushels—is sown broadcast, and is ploughed in by the native plough. The sowing is very often imperfectly performed, the distribution of the seed being very irregular. The next process is rolling by drawing a baulk of wood (see illustration), three yards long, over the land; then ridges are made seven yards apart to regulate the even distribution of water.
Somewhere about twelve days after the sowing the shoots appear above ground, when the “braird” is about four inches high. Occasionally there is an attack of “grub,” or cut-worm; but the damage is never serious, a watering destroying the pest, and some seed sown on the blanks caused by the worm soon make good the damage. Rolling with a press roller has been found to materially stop the destruction. Eighty days after sowing, or when the crop has attained a height of two feet, it receives its first watering; forty days afterwards its second and last. Sixty days after the final irrigation the crop will be ripe for harvest. The method of harvesting—reaping—is by small hand hooks, men, women, and boys turning out to work at midnight, reaping till seven a.m., subsequently gathering the unbound sheaves into rows, and afterwards gleaning, finishing up about nine a.m.