162 COTTON 



less effort and labor later on will be required to com- 

 plete the work. Then culture is given also to break 

 the surface crust that forms after each rain, so as 

 to conserve moisture and blanket the ground with 

 a mulch of fine dry soil. If rains come often, we 

 need to cultivate often; if weeds and grass persist 

 in presenting themselves, then we must keep the 

 cultivator going, in order to disappoint them and 

 prove ourselves masters of the situation. Then 

 too, if dry weather becomes the rule, the cultivator 

 must be kept at work so as to hold the water in the 

 soil as far as possible for growing plants. 



The best tool for this purpose, as has already 

 been suggested, is a light cultivator with several 

 shovels. If you will use this tool once every week 

 or ten days, going once or twice in every row, you 

 will have little difficulty in keeping cotton free from 

 weeds and grass and in providing suitable cultiva- 

 tion for these other purposes. 



TOPPING THE PLANTS 



A practice more widely followed in former years 

 than now is "topping cotton." This operation 

 consists in the removal of a few inches of the ex- 

 treme top of the cotton stalk late in summer. The 

 idea is to check the growth of the leafy upper part 

 of the plant, and thereby favor the fuller develop- 

 ment of the bolls already formed. 



Tests as to the advantages of topping have been 

 made at a number of places, including several at 

 our Experiment Stations, but fail to indicate any 

 benefit from the practice; in fact, some of these 

 tests have been quite unfavorable to it. In the face 

 of these results and in view of the labor required, 



