492 



MANUAL OF THE NILAGIRI DISTRICT. 



Coffee 

 Cultivation 



-planting. 



CH XXVIII. roots, &c., the coolies should now be set to pitting. The usual 

 contract is 25 pits, 2 feet cube, per man^ or 10 rupees per thousand, 

 and the planter should see that the pits are made full size, and 

 that roots and stones are carefully taken out, as also that the 

 pits are made exactly where the pegs were placed. These pits 

 should be allowed to stand open till shortly before the rains set 

 in, when they should be filled in with soil from the jungle (which 

 would be a good, though an expensive, plan) or else with the 

 surrounding earth, stones being carefully rejected and the peg 

 replaced in the centre of the pit for a guide when planting. 



Some planters maintain that it is not a good plan to plant 

 during heavy rain or very early in the monsoon ; but having 

 planted in all weathers, I think that one cannot begin too soon 

 after the rain has once fairly set in. At the same time the most 

 favourable season (if you are so fortunately situated from having 

 abundance of labour and work being well in hand as to be enabled 

 to pick your days) is during dull showery weather. If the plants 

 come from the planter's own nursery, a good though expensive 

 plan is to take up each plant with a ball of earth attached 

 and plant it thus in the pit, but with balls a cooly will not plant 

 more than 60 or 70, and if the plants are brought from any 

 distance this is out of the question. If planted without balls, 

 the cooly should be provided with a sharp-pointed stick, with 

 which he makes a hole in the loose earth of the pit, inserts the 

 plant, gives it a slight pull upwards to provide against the tap- 

 root being twisted, and then, with hand or foot, presses the earth 

 firmly down all round the plant. A cooly should plant out 200 

 or 250 in this way, and should be carefully watched to see that 

 he does not plant two in a pit, or even throw some away in order 

 to get over his task the sooner. 



In about two months' time, or perhaps less, the newly-planted 

 land will require weeding, and it will be a good thing if the 

 planter makes two resolutions : the first, to keep constantly 

 weeding so as never to allow the weeds to seed or get ahead 

 of him, and secondly, never to allow a mamoty to be used in 

 weeding. With constant care and attention hand-weeding can 

 easily get rid of all the weeds, and these being few and far 

 between, the weeding will be cheap and expeditious, as each cooly 

 will easily be able to ran over three or four long lines. In the evil 

 olden days, when the rule was to take as much out of the soil 

 as possible and high cultivation was unknown, the weeds were 

 allowed to grow until they threatened to smother the coffee, 

 and then gangs of coolies were sent with mamoties, and they 

 dug and scratched away till, what with this constant scrape of the 

 mamoty and the wash caused by the heavy monsoon rain, most 

 of the old estates have lost all their surfaeo-soil, and it is almost 



-weeding. 



