No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 843 



Our tobacco is planted in rows about three and one half feet apart. 

 We don't get much closer than three feet with the planter as it is 

 built, but I have no doubt that a machine could be built to set cab- 

 bage plants that you could get closer. Generally the Pennsylvania 

 broad leaf tobacco which we grow is placed from twenty-four to thir- 

 ty inches in the row with the rows about three and one half feet 

 apart. 



The first trouble after planting is the cut worm. Very often a 

 few days or even the first night after the tobacco plants are set 

 out this worm will eat off a great many. \'arious remedies have been 

 tried and the one most successful and practical on the experiment 

 plot was in making a mixture of about a bushel of bran, a pound 

 of Paris green and a quart of molasses and put enough water to it to 

 get a crumbly mass and mix all into a candy bucket and take a 

 small bucket and drop a pinch at each plant. The molasses will 

 draw the cut worm and he will tat that before the plant. Last year 

 in planting an acre, planting by hand on account of the large num- 

 ber of small plots, we turned up many cut worms Avith the trowel, 

 and in planting that acre. There must have been a great many 

 that we did not turn up. I put on that mixture of bran, Paris green 

 and molasses and not more than six plants on the acre were miss- 

 ing. We think that an effective method. 



After your field is set out the cultivation is almost the same as 

 that for corn. The first cultivation we do not work too close to the 

 plant. The roots of the plant must be established before we start 

 thorough cultivation ; then cultivate deeply for a while and gradually 

 right up towards the plant. As these leaves develop it will lay 

 down and spread out and by ridging up we can keep it thrown up and 

 make it easier to get through the rows. 



I have here a number of stalks of tobacco. While the crop is 

 growing other insects attack it. There is one. worm known as the 

 tobacco worm that causes a lot of damage. A moth comes flying 

 over the fields in the evening, and lays its eggs on the under side of 

 the leaves. These eggs hatch out into a small green worm. The 

 worm grown rapidly and in three Aveeks it gets about three inches 

 long. It shears off the leaves and eats everything but the mid rib. 

 Then it creeps into the ground and changes into another pupae and 

 later comes out as a moth and lays another set of eggs. There are 

 two broods in a year. Another insect is the grasshopper. . This 

 jumps and will eat a hole in a leaf and then jump over to another 

 leaf and eat a hole there. Sometimes there is a little black insect 

 called the flea beetle comes along and eats a small hole, a shot hole. 

 These are not so injurious to cigar filler tobacco but yet damage it 

 quite a bit. One of the worst things is a hail storm. A hail storm 

 will ruin the entire crop. If a hail stone goes through a leaf you 

 can always tell the mark on the leaf. 



Now I have here a cured stalk of tobacco just as taken out of the 

 curing shed during the winter. Now the purpose of the tobacco 

 plant, of course, will be to produce seed. Along towards fall, about 

 the last of July, there appears on the top of the plant here a bud 

 which will be a seed head. If you leave that bud develop and the 

 flowers come out and seed develop, it is going to change the type of 

 the plant. The upper leaves will be small, hard and woody, and the 

 plant will not ripen up and the quality of the tobacco be poor. So 



