The Tobacco Crop 227 



remain on the matured leaf and be dangerous. There- 

 fore, we would depend on hand picking and the turkeys 

 for the late brood. 



The bright tobacco section was formerly 

 The Bright confined to a few counties in the northern 

 Yellow pg^j.^. q£ North Carolina. But in recent years 



Tobacco of . , , r ^ ^ 1 1 .1 r t 



j^Qj.^jj it has been found that the sandy sous of the 



Carolina coast plain of that State and the upper Pine 



Belt of South Carolina are equally adapted 

 to this kind of tobacco. A light sandy soil of a gray color 

 is preferred for this class of tobacco, which is used both for 

 cigarettes and for making light-colored plug tobacco for 

 chewing. 



While it is generally admitted that a new soil abounding 

 in humus is the ideal tobacco soil, there is a great prejudice 

 among the growers of the gold leaf tobacco against im- 

 proving the humus content of their soils through the use 

 of legume crops such as clover and the cow pea. Many 

 growers declare that they cannot grow tobacco of fine 

 quahty after peas or clover. The main reason has been 

 that they forget that the peas and clover have largely 

 increased the nitrogen in the soil, and they use the same 

 kind of fertilizer high in nitrogen that they have been 

 accustomed to use on thinner soil. The result is that the 

 tobacco grows too rankly and late and is of a coarser 

 character. But a good rotation of crops and the improve- 

 ment of the soil by the use of the legumes is fully as im- 

 portant to the growers of the gold leaf tobacco as it is to 

 those who grow the dark shipping leaf and the White 

 Burley. But after the turning under of a large growth of 

 cow peas or a sod of clover, some other crop should come 



