DIVISION OF TOBACCO 695 



SESSIONAL PAPER No. 16 



For the first time since the establishment of this Station, hotbeds were not used. The 

 sowing took place on April 12, the seed having first been swollen. The seedlings 

 were ready for use on June 2. Unfortunately these had to be kept until June 15 for 

 it was impossible, on account of the continual rain, which prevented the preparation 

 of the soil, to commence sooner the work of transplantation. This work was difficult 

 as the cutworms and wire worms did a great deal of destruction and it was necessary 

 to replace some 30 per cent of the plants. The cultivation of the plantation was very 

 laborious on account of the constant packing of the soil under the action of the rain. 

 The ripening was imperfect, as it was necessary, owing to danger from frost, to 

 harvest the crop from the 6th to the 8th September. 



The greater part of the seed pods of Gonistock had to be abandoned. The pods 

 did not arrive at a sufficient degree of maturity to furnish seed of the first quality. 

 Fortunately, the yield of seed from the tobacco plantation at Ottawa will permit us to 

 meet all demands for samples. In spite of the unfavourable character of the season, 

 the yield on the Station at St. Jacques was satisfactory, amounting to 1,242 pounds 

 per arpent for the Comstock, 792 pounds per arpent for the Cuban, and 1,364 pounds 

 per arpent for the Aurora. The last-named tobacco has particularly attracted the 

 attention of some growers at the annual exhibition at St. Jacques, in January, 1913. 

 The growing process took place normally, although a little slow in commencing. In 

 order to hasten and complete the reduction of the main ribs, it was necessary, toward 

 the end of the operation, to resort to artificial heat, which was obtained by placing 

 small pots of wood charcoal in the lower part of the drying shed. 



The tobacco from the St. Jacques Station was sent to Ottawa on February 8 to 

 be sorted and fermented in the warehouse on the Central Farm. 



TOBACCO STATION AT FARNHAM, QUE. i 



The greater part of the tobacco experiments for the province of Quebec, in 1912, 

 were carried on at this Station. On account of the considerable size of the Station 

 and of the delay in obtaining possession of it, which took place on May 28, a time 

 when the seedlings were in good condition for transplanting, and on account of the 

 almost complete state of neglect in which this property had been left for many years, 

 the solution of the making of it, as rapidly as possible, into a model farm was not 

 without many difficulties. 



These difficulties were increased, at the beginning, by the unfavourable character 

 of the season. Continual rains prevented work on the fields which were, in addition, 

 flooded by lack of ditches and drains. The ploughing done the previous fall had to 

 be done over again, as it had been performed so badly and so late that the sod turned 

 under was still intact, not having even commenced to rot. In spite of much use of 

 tlie disc harrow, one could not, on certain parts of the Station, cut up the sod 

 sufficiently to enable one to use the machine planter, which clogged up as soon as tin- 

 attempt was made to use it. As a result, of ten arpents planted to tobacco in 1912, 

 three were planted entirely by hand. 



For all of these reasons, the transplantation, commenced on June 15, was not 

 completed until the 30th of that month, a very late date for this operation, especially 

 in Quebec. In the meantime, the seedlings, which had been ready for use since the 

 28th of May, grew spindling, or developed crooked roots in the baskets where we had 

 tried to keep them in fit condition until transplanting time by placing the baskets 

 in cellars or cool silos. 



The ten arpents planted in tobacco were situated in such different parts of the 

 farm as we had been able to clear, in order to give some idea of the nature of the soil. 



The chemical analysis of the soil at the Farnham Station gives fairly encouraging 

 results, in spite of certain admitted differences in the amount of nitrogen contained 



