47 



stiuctive effect of winds can only be done by its general location^ the 

 placing of wind breaks and other measures which are not particularly 

 applicable to a single crop. 



The growing period. — ^The total time from planting to harvesting 

 the sugar cane in the Philippines varies from eight to fourteen months 

 and probably averages ten to eleven months. Cane planted sometimes 

 as late' as the end of April or the first of May is harvested in December 

 and January, but the great bulk of the crop is planted during the 

 months of January, February, and March and harvested in from ten 

 to twelve months. 



The harvesting of the 1911 crop in Negros was not completed until 

 nearly the first of June on account of scarcity of labor and much of 

 the cane grew through a period of twelve to fifteen months without 

 arrowing. 



Ratoon crops. — The eyes on the rootstock below the surface of the 

 ground generally retain full vitality even in tropical canes growing 

 to maturity during a very long period. This makes it possible to 

 produce one or more crops of stubble or ratoon cane succeeding the 

 harvest of the first or plant cane crop. The total number of ratoon 

 crops which can be produced varies with the climate, soil fertility 

 and method of cultivation. In Louisiana one or two ratoon crops are 

 secured while four or five are often harvested ill Hawaii. It is said 

 that cane continues to produce for as long as fifty or seventy-five years 

 from a single planting in the richer portions of Cuba. 



Sugar planters of Negros rarely ever take more than one or two 

 ratoon crops and the majority of them tend to replant the cane every 

 year. In Pampanga, and all of the other sandy land districts, it is 

 almost invariably planted anew for each crop. 



The harvesting of the cane and the simultaneous planting of the 

 new crop in the Philippines requires so much labor of men and animals 

 that there is always a tendency to neglect the ratoons that are carried 

 over for a second or subsequent crop. Many times the field is burned 

 over by accident and the young cane which may have come up is 

 destroyed. The stand is often permanently injured if the trash is 

 deep and the land dry when the burning occurs. It would be easy 

 to avoid this by raking the trash into the middle of the rows and 

 burning it soon after harvesting the cane. A still better system, espe- 

 cially for poor lands, is to rake the trash into the middle of the rows 

 and cover it with dirt so that it will decay and add vegetable matter 

 to the land. For this purpose a turn plow may be run on both sides 

 of the rows so as to bar off the stubble and throw the dirt to the 

 middle of the rows. An improved implement for doing this work is 

 a double gang barring-off plow built on the same plan as the wheel 

 cultivators. It carries . two share plows, one turning to the right and 



