134 THE HANDBOOK FOR PRACTICAL FARMERS 



setting by hand is practiced. The plants are spaced sixteen to 

 twenty-four inches apart in a row in the cigar tobacco and 

 Burley districts and two and one-half to four feet elsewhere. 

 Clean and shallow cultivation should be practiced. When the 

 flow^er head appears this should be broken out for the purpose 

 of increasing the develoiDUient of the lower leaves. In carrying 

 out the process of "topping" the number of leaves left on the 

 plant varies with the type of tobacco produced. Suckers or 

 branches apiiearing in the leaf axils must also be broken out. 



Harvesting and curing. — Sixty to ninety days after trans- 

 planting the tobacco will be ripe, as indicated by a change of the 

 deep green color of the leaf to a lighter shade, with the appear- 

 ance of yellowish green flecks on the surface and a tendency for 

 the leaf to become brittle. Harvesting is done either by cutting 

 off the stalk near the ground or by plucking the leaves at intervals 

 as they ripen, beginning at the base of the plant. The leaves 

 alone or the stalks bearing the leaves, as the case may be, are 

 attached to sticks by means of strings, hooks or otherwise, and 

 hung up in the specially constructed barn for curing. In all 

 methods of curing the rate of drying must be carefully regulated. 

 In flue-curing heat is applied by means of a furnace and pipes 

 extending through the barn. In ''fire-curing" slow open fires 

 are maintained on the earthen floor of the barn, the tobacco 

 being thus exposed to the smoke from the fires. Air-curing, in 

 which no artificial heat is used, is employed in the cigar tobacco, 

 Burley, and certain other districts. In air-curing it is essential 

 that effective ventilation be provided. Flue-curing requires 

 three to five days, while air-curing requires four to ten weeks. 

 After curing is completed, as indicated by the midrib of the leaf 

 becoming dry and brittle for its whole length, the tobacco is 

 removed from the barn at a time when sufficient moisture has 

 been absorbed from the air by the leaf to soften it so that it may 

 be handled without breaking. The leaves are assorted into 

 grades according to size, color, freedom from blemishes, etc., 

 and are then tied into small "hands" or bundles in preparation 

 for market. The tobacco thus prepared may be disposed of by 

 private sale at the farm, through sale based on samples dis- 

 played by the Avarehouseman as agent of the grower, or by auc- 

 tion sale on the floor of the loose leaf sales warehouse on a 

 commission basis.^ 



* For further details rcp;arding tlie growing, curing and handling of tobacco, tho 

 series of Farmers' Bulletins on these subjects issued by the U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture may be consulted. 



