After the plants have taken root, and begin to grow, the ground is carefully weeded and worked, either with hand hoes or the plough, according as it will admit. After the plants have considerably increased in bulk, and begin to shoot up, the tops are pinched off, and only ten, twelve, or sixteen leaves left, according to the quality of the tobacco and the soil. The worms, also, are carefully picked off and destroyed, of which there are two species that prey upon tobacco. One is the ground worm, which cuts it off just beneath the surface of the earth; this must be carefully looked for and trodden to death; it is of a dark brown color, and short. The other is a horn worm, some inches in length, as thick as your little finger, of a vivid green color, with a number of pointed excrescences or feelers from his head like horns. These devour the leaf, and are always upon the plant. As it would be endless labor to keep their hands constantly in search of them, it would be almost impossible to prevent their eating up more than half the crop had it not been discovered that turkeys are particularly dexterous at finding them, eat them up voraciously, and prefer them to every other food. For this purpose every planter keeps a flock of turkeys, which he has driven into the tobacco grounds every day by a little negro that can do nothing else; these keep his tobacco more clear from horn worms than all the hands he has got could do were they employed solely for that end. When the tops are nipped off, a few plants are left untouched for seed. On the plants that have been topped, young shoots are apt to spring out, which are termed suckers, and are carefully and constantly broken off lest they should draw too much of the nourishment and substance from the leaves of the plant. This operation is also performed from time to time, and is called "suckering tobacco." For some time before it is ripe, or ready for cutting, the ground is perfectly covered with leaves, which have increased to a prodigious size, and then the plants are generally about three feet high. When it is ripe, a clammy moisture or exudation comes forth upon the leaves, which appear, as it were, ready to become spotted, and they are then of a great weight and substance. The tobacco is cut when the sun is powerful, but not in the morning and evening. The plant, if large, is split down the middle, and cut off two or three inches below the extremity of the split; it is then turned directly bottom upwards, for the sun to kill it more speedily, to enable the laborers to carry it out of the field, else the leaves would break off in transporting it to the scaffold. The plants are cut only as they become ripe, for a field never ripens altogether. There is generally a second cutting likewise, for the stalk vegetates and shoots forth again, and in good land, with favorable seasons, there is a third cutting also procured, notwithstanding acts of the Legislature to prevent cutting tobacco even a second time.
When the tobacco plants are cut and brought to the scaffolds, which are generally erected all around the tobacco houses, they are placed with the split across a small oak stick, an inch and better in diameter and four feet and a half long, so close as each plant just to touch the other without bruising or pressing. These sticks are then placed on the scaffolds, with the tobacco thus suspended in the middle, to dry or cure, and are called tobacco sticks. As the plants advance in curing, the sticks are removed from the scaffolds out of doors into the tobacco house, on to other scaffolds erected therein in successive regular gradations from the bottom to the top of the roof, being placed higher as the tobacco approaches to a perfect cure, until the house is all filled and the tobacco quite cured, and this cure is frequently promoted by making fires on the floor below. When the tobacco house is quite full, and there is still more tobacco to bring in, all that is within the house is struck, and taken down, and carefully placed in bulks, or regular rows, one upon another, and the whole covered with trash tobacco, or straw, to preserve it in a proper condition, that is moist, which prevents its wasting and crumbling to pieces. But, to enable them to strike the cured tobacco, they must wait for what is there called a season, that is rainy or moist weather, when the plants will better bear handling, for in dry weather the leaves would all crumble to pieces in the attempt. By this means a tobacco house may be filled two, three, or four times in the year. Every night the negroes are sent to the tobacco house to strip, that is to pull off the leaves from the stalk, and tie them up in hands or bundles. This is also their daily occupation in rainy weather. In stripping, they are careful to throw away all the ground leaves and faulty tobacco, binding up none but what is merchantable. The hands or bundles thus tied up are also laid in what are called a bulk, and covered with the refuse tobacco or straw to preserve their moisture. After this, the tobacco is carefully packed in hogsheads, and pressed down with a large beam laid over it, on the ends of which prodigious weights are suspended, the other end being inserted with a mortice in a tree, close to which the hogshead is placed. This vast pressure is continued for some days, and then the cask is filled up again with tobacco until it will contain no more, after which it is headed up and carried to the pubic warehouses for inspection. At these warehouses two skilful planters constantly attend, and receive a salary from the public for that purpose. They are sworn to inspect with honesty, care, and impartiality, all the tobacco that comes to the warehouse, and none is allowed to be shipped that is not regularly inspected. The head of the cask is taken off, and the tobacco is opened by means of large, long iron wedges, and great labour, in such places as the inspectors direct. After this strict attentive examination, if they find it good and merchantable, it is replaced in the cask, weighed at the public scales, the weight of the tobacco and of the cask also cut in the wood on the cask, stowed away in the public warehouses, and a note given to the proprietor, which he disposes of to the merchant, and he neither sees nor has any trouble with his tobacco more. The weight of each hogshead must be 950 lbs. nett, exclusive of the cask—for less a note will not be given. Under the name of a crop hogshead, however, the general weight is from 1,000 to 1,200 or 1,300 lbs. nett, but if the tobacco is found to be totally bad, and refused as unmerchantable, the whole is publicly burnt in a place set apart for that purpose. However, if it be judged that there is some merchantable tobacco in the hogshead, the owner must unpack the whole publicly on the spot, for he is not permitted to take any of it away again, and must select and separate the good from the bad; the last is immediately committed to the flames, and for the first he receives a transfer note, specifying the weight, quality, &c. This great and very laudable care was taken by the public to prevent frauds, which, however, was not always effectual, for, even with all these precautions, many acts of iniquity and imposition were committed.
So little is this crop cultivated in the States north of Maryland, that scarcely any notice has been taken of it in the agricultural or other public journals.
In Connecticut, in some few towns of Hartford county, considerable attention has been directed to it for a number of years past. A ton and a-half the acre is said to be no uncommon yield. The tobacco is planted very thick, two feet and a half each way. The seed came originally from Virginia. It is cured in houses, without having been yellowed in the sun, and without the use of fire. It is said that the best Havana cigars (as they are termed) are often manufactured from mixed Cuba and American tobacco, and sold under that name in Connecticut.
In the Connecticut Valley is produced about 500 tons of tobacco annually, the average quantity, 1,500 lbs. per acre, value from seven to ten cents per pound.
Culture.—Seed bed made rich and sown as cabbage early in April as possible.
Land well ploughed and manured and harrowed as for corn, laid out in rows three feet apart, and slight hills in the row about two and a-half feet apart; begin to plant about 10th of June, the ground to be kept clean with hoe and cultivator, and examine the plants and keep clear of worms.
"When in blossom and before seed is formed, the plants must be topped about thirty-two inches from the ground, having from sixteen to twenty leaves on each stalk, after this the suckers are broken off, and the plants kept clean till cut. When ripe the leaves are spotted, thick, and will crack when pressed between the fingers and thumb. It is cut at any time of the day, after the dew is off, left in the row till wilted, then turned, and if there is a hot sun, it is often turned to prevent burning; after wilting it is put into small heaps of six or eight plants, then carried to the tobacco house for hanging, usually on poles twelve feet long; hung with twine about forty plants to a pole, twenty on each side, crossing the pole with a hitch knot to the stump end of the plants; when perfectly cured, which is known by the stems of the leaves being completely dry, it is then taken in a damp time, when the leaves will not crumble, from the poles and placed in large piles, by letting the tops of the plants lap each other, leaving the butts out; it remains in these heaps from three to ten days before it is stripped, depending on the state of weather, but it must not be allowed to heat. When stripped it is made into small hands, the small and broken leaves to be kept by themselves; it is then packed in boxes of about 400 lbs. and marked "Seed Leaf Tobacco."
One acre of tobacco will require as much labor as two of corn that produce 60 bags to the acre, and requires about the same quantity of manure. If the tobacco can be cured without fire heat the quality will be improved, and if dried in the open air, should have shades of boards to keep off rain and excess of sun. The chief market for Connecticut tobacco is Bremen.
In a number of the "Charleston Southern Planter," a remedy is described for preventing the destruction of plants by the fly. The writer says: "I had a bushel or two of dry ashes put into a large tub, and added train oil enough (say one gallon of oil to the bushel of ashes) to damp and flavor the ashes completely: this was well stirred and mixed with the hand, and sown broadcast over certain patches, and proved thoroughly effectual for several years, while parts left without the remedy were destroyed."