3. Cover the ground two inches deep with tan-bark, sawdust, or fine straw, just before the blossoms open; tan-bark is best.
4. Never allow the vines to become very thick, but thin them out.
5. Water every day from the appearance of the blossoms until done gathering the fruit; this increases the crop largely, and, at the South, has continued the vines in bearing until November. Daily watering will prolong the bearing season greatly in all climates, and greatly increase the crop.
6. Protect in winter by a slight covering of forest-leaves, coarse straw, or cornstalks.
7. To get a late crop, keep the vines covered deep with straw. You can retard their maturity two weeks, and daily watering will prolong it for weeks.
8. Apply, twice in the fall and once in the spring, a solution of potash, one pound in two pails of water, or two pounds in a barrel of water in which stable-manure has been soaked.
9. The best general applications to the soil, in preparing the bed, are lime, charcoal, and wood-ashes—one part of lime to two of ashes and three of charcoal. The application of wood-ashes will render less dissolved potash necessary.
These nine rules, strictly observed, will render every cultivator successful in all climates and localities.
SUGAR.
There have, until recently, been but two general sources of our supply of sugar—the sugar-cane of the South, and the sugar-maple of the North. Beet-sugar will not be extensively manufactured in this country. We now have added the Sorgho, or Chinese sugar-cane, and the Imphee, or African sugar-cane, adapted to the North and the South, flourishing wherever Indian corn will grow, and raised as easily and surely, and much in the same way. Of the methods of making sugar from the old sugar-cane of the South, we need give no account. It is not an article of general domestic manufacture. It is made on a large scale on plantations, and is in itself simple, and easily learned by the few who become sugar-planters.