158 TOBACCO LEAF. 



able cloth ranges from three to three and one-half cents 

 per yard, and will, if taken care of, last several seasons. 

 At the North, glass is often used instead of cloth reg- 

 ular hotbed sash, five and one-half feet long. Cloth- 

 covered frames of the same size are made to take the 

 place of the glass sash after the plants are well started, 

 this arrangement being shown by Fig. 17. 



Other Methods. Some planters select a place and 

 make a standing bed, which is kept and used from year 

 to year. After the planting season is over, and before 

 the grass and weeds have gone to seed, the standing bed 

 is coultered, and then covered with straw, leaves, or 

 brush with leaves on, so thickly as to hide the surface 

 and prevent vegetable growth. The trash and brush 

 are burned off at some dry time in November, or later. 

 Such standing beds, if well manured, are said to become 

 better each succeeding year. They are heavily dressed 

 with fresh loam from the woodlands, and composts of 

 stable manure, thoroughly rotted, care being taken to 

 handle it so as to destroy all foreign seeds, and also 

 with frequent topdressings of good commercial fertilizers. 



In Louisiana the soil is not burned at all in making 

 seed beds, because the immense quantity of undecom- 

 posed vegetable matter contained in the soil makes it 

 too light and porous when burned. A spot is selected, 

 generally of old land, which is highly manured with cow 

 dung spread on to a depth of six inches, and turned 

 under with a spade or plow. After this, the bed is 

 chopped fine with a hoe and pulverized with frequent 

 rakings. This is done in October. The bed is worked 

 again in December, and beaten with the back of a spade, 

 or compacted with a roller ; channels to secure drainage 

 are cut through it every three feet, and the seed is sown 

 in January. 



In Tennessee and Kentucky, when heds are made 

 upon rich virgin soils, manurial applications are rare, 



