60 COTTON CULTURE. 



On pleasant days, the hands may be breaking down the 

 cotton stalks, or clearing new land. 



This is a good time also to fill up washes and old gulches 

 in the field, and prevent little ones from growing any 

 larger. Cut down pine bushes, and lay them in the washes 

 lengthwise; cane from the cane-brakes answers the same 

 purpose very well. Take care of your cotton seed at this 

 time. That which is intended for planting, should be 

 stored in a shed or loft, where the air has free access, and 

 stirred to prevent fermentation. The rest should be care- 

 fully saved for manure. The ashes of it were found, by 

 one analysis, to contain fifty-five per cent of potash, and 

 if it is faithfully returned to the cotton field, and your 

 lands prevented from washing, cotton will be found a very 

 slow exhauster of the soil. 



FEBRUARY 



You must expect numerous and heavy rains this month, 

 but on porous soils, after the twelfth or fifteenth, it will be 

 dry enough to plow. 



This is the proper time for projecting the crop of another 

 year, obtaining hands, fixing them in comfortable quarters, 

 and purchasing additional mules and other stock. 



Cut and haul a supply of wood. Haul out your cotton 

 seed and other manures, and spread them on the fields. 

 Decide as to rotation of crops ; where you will have your 

 cotton, where your corn, oats, and sweet potatoes. 



After the middle of the month, whenever it is dry enough, 

 let the two-horse plows be throwing up beds for the cot- 

 ton rows. Four feet apart on hill lands, and five or five 

 and a half in the swamp, is the rule. 



Cotton that stands thick, will produce as many open bolls 

 before frost as that which is thinner, and it is the open 

 bolls before frost that will give you the best cotton. 



Get in a few acres of oats. 



