The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom / Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.

by P. L. Simmonds

Near Calcutta, from 3,000 to 8,000 plants are required for a beegah, according to the goodness of the soil, the worst soil needing most plants. In Mysore an acre contains 2,420 stools, and yields about 11,000 ripe canes.

Near Rajahmundry, about 400 cuttings are planted on a cutcha beegah (one-eighth of an acre). In Zilla, North Mooradabad, 4,200 sets, each eight inches long, are inserted upon each cutcha beegah of low land, and 5,250 upon high land.

In the district of Gollagore the Ryots cut a ripe cane into several pieces, preserving two or three joints to each, and put them into a small bed of rich mould, dung, and mustard-seed from which the oil has been expressed. At Radnagore, when the time of cutting the canes arrives, their tops are taken off, and these are placed upright in a bed of mud for thirty or forty days, and covered with leaves or straw. The leaves are then stripped from them, and they are cut into pieces, not having less than two nor more than four joints each. These sets are kept for ten or fifteen days in a bed prepared for them, from whence they are taken and planted in rows two or three together, eighteen inches or two feet intervening between each stool.

Planting.—The time and mode of planting vary. In the Rajahmundry Circar, Dr. Roxburgh says, that "during the months of April and May the land is repeatedly ploughed with the common Hindoo plough, which soon brings the loose rich soil (speaking of the Delta of the Godavery) into very excellent order. About the end of May and beginning of June, the rains generally set in, in frequent heavy showers. Now is the time to plant the cane; but should the rains hold back, the prepared field is watered or flooded from the river, and, while perfectly wet, like soft mud, the cane is planted.

"The method is most simple. Laborers with baskets of the cuttings, of one or two joints each, arrange themselves along one side of the field. They walk side by side, in as straight a line as their eye and judgment enable them, dropping the sets at the distance of about eighteen inches asunder in rows, and about four feet from row to row. Other laborers follow, and with the foot press the set about two inches into the soft, mud-like soil, which, with a sweep or two with the sole of the foot, they most easily and readily cover."—(Roxburgh on the Culture of Sugar.)

About Malda, in the month of Maug (January, February), the land is to be twice ploughed, and harrowed repeatedly, length and breadth ways; after which it is furrowed, the furrows half a cubit apart, in which the plants are to be set at about four fingers' distance from each other, when the furrows are filled up with the land that lay upon its ridges. The plants being thus set, the land is harrowed twice in different directions; fifteen or twenty days afterwards the cane begins to grow, when the weeds which appear with it must be taken up; ten or twelve days after this the weeds will again appear. They must again be taken up, and the earth at the roots of the canes be removed, when all the plants which have grown will appear.

At Ghazepore the rains set in at the beginning of March, and planting then commences. Near Calcutta the planting takes place in May and June. In Dinajpoor and Rungpore the planting time is February.

About Commercolly it is performed in January. The field is divided into beds six cubits broad, separated from each other by small trenches fourteen inches wide and eight inches deep. In every second trench are small wells, about two feet deep. The irrigating water flowing along the trenches fills the wells, and is taken thence and applied to the canes by hand.

Each bed has five rows of canes. The sets are planted in holes about six inches in diameter, and three deep; two sets, each having three joints, are laid horizontally in every hole, covered slightly with earth, and over this is a little dung.

When, the canes are planted in the spring, the trenches must be filled with water, and some poured into every hole. At the other season of planting the trenches are full, it being rainy weather; but even then the sets must be watered for the first month.