CUBAN PLANT BED. 423 



bed is sometimes damaged by a too deep working. Eake 

 carefully, getting off all the roots and trash. The bed should 

 be drained by a little ditch around it on the upper side. If 

 it is very early in the Fall, the seed should not be sown until 

 the danger of very warm days has passed. After the last of 

 November the sowing should be as soon as the bed is prepared. 

 A little less than a heaping tablespoonful to ten steps square 

 is about the quantity of seed. Cover the seed very lightly 

 with the rake or tramping the ground with the feet. Cover 

 the bed with a good layer of straight brush, not enough to 

 keep the light rains from the bed, but at the same time 

 enough to keep the ground in a moist condition even in hot 

 weather. Make a low close brush fence around the bed to 

 keep the leaves from being blown upon it. Re-sow whenever 

 the plants are well up, so as to have two chances. Take off 

 the brush cover when the plants are big enough to shade the 

 ground themselves. If the plants are rather thin on the bed, 

 do not uncover until you go there to draw the plants. If 

 there is any danger of a scarcity of plants, always put the 

 trash back after drawing." 

 In Cuba the 



"SEMILLEKOS" 



or planting beds as a rule, lie higher than the rest of the 

 farm. On the large vegas or tobacco plantations, numbers of 

 planting beds are made under the supervision of the mayoral. 

 Siecke gives the following account of making the beds or 

 semilleros : 



" On the island of Cuba any field selected for the cultiva- 

 tion of tobacco is divided into long beds (Canteras) twenty- 

 five to twenty-eight feet long, and nineteen to twenty inches 

 wide. The soil is then manured with a mixture of two parts 

 of well rotten dung and one part of either sand or fine sandy 

 earth. During the months of August, September, and even 

 October, the beds are watered, and the seeds mingled with 

 the nine-fold quantity of fine sand, are sown broad cast or 

 through a fine sieve, and immediately after covered with a 

 mixture of dung and triturated or molaxated earth, in such a 

 manner that this mixture forms a covering layer of about 

 1-32 inches. 



"The utmost care is taken to protect the seeds against the 

 itifling heat of sunrays as well as heavy showers. To 

 this end forked sticks about three inches high, are placed 



