CULTURE AND CURING IN NEW YORK. 105 



C to 20 inches iii depth, and will bear plowing from 6 to 10 inches deep. While the best crops are raised on the 

 fertile, sandy loauis, very fine crops are also raised on the beech and maple lands, with basswood or linden and elm 

 iii term ixed. 



Much the larger portion of Onondaga, which is the chief and a fairly typical tobacco county, is on a limestone 

 formation. The leaf grown on the sandy loams of the pine and chestnut regions and that grown on the strictly 

 limestone soils, with a loose, friable loam and a growth of beech and maple, burn freely with a white ash, 

 and has an excellent flavor, is rich in color, is of fine texture, and has a good body. The muck or peat-swamp lands 

 and stiff clay soils produce a slow-growing tobacco, which lacks free-burning qualities, and the leaves are a dark 

 ash. The sandy lands, dark and light, and the limestone soils, are those mostly cultivated in tobacco. The clays 

 are stifl', moist, cold, and hard to work, the product often full of white veins, stiff and harsh, and burns poorly. 

 About one-half of the soil suited to tobacco in Onoudaga county is now occupied. Of the woodlands of this county 

 most of the upland is adapted to its growth. 



The underlying rocks in Onondaga, .Madison, and portions of Oswego are blue limestone. In Manlius township, 

 Onondaga county, there are large deposits of gypsum and water-cement limestone. Excellent free-burning tobacco 

 is produced on the gypsum formations. Gypsum is used freely on tobacco lands with good efl'ect. Red sandstone 

 crops out in portions of Onondaga, but the lands on this formation are but little used for tobacco. The great salt 

 belt also runs through the tobacco region. This belt has an underlying formation of red, soft shale, or "marking 

 stone", upon which tobacco is grown with success. Much the larger portion of the crop of New York is grown 

 upon limestone soils. 



The soil of the Chemung Flats and of the Big Flats is a rich, deep, dark loam, sometimes mixed with fine gravel, 

 and admirably suited to tobacco. These soils are made up of alluvial deposits, and differ in that respect from those 

 of Onoudaga. 



TOBACCO MANURES. 



Manures of various kinds are used on between 50 and 80 per cent, of the tobacco raised, and phosphates and 

 giiano are sometimes applied in the hill, about 200 pounds to the acre, at a cost of $4 per acre. Tobacco-growers, 

 however, are only beginning to experiment with commercial fertilizers. Generally fifteen or twenty, and often as 

 much as forty loads of stable, barn-yard, and bog-pen manures are applied per acre, and the cost is estimated at 

 from $5 to $40 per acre, a good authority placing the average at $15. The improvement in quantity is estimated 

 at from 25 to 75 per cent, in actual practice, according to the kind and quantity used, with an improvement in quality 

 of from 40 to CO per cent. The coarser portions of barn-yard manures are scattered on the field and plowed in, 

 but the more valuable portions are made into composts, with ashes, lime, gypsum, and potash, to be applied in 

 the hill, a handful being covered 2 or 3 inches deep in the center and the plant set in this. When it can be bought 

 at all, stable manure is sold at the barn for about $1 a load. 



Bone dust, plaster, and lime have been used to some extent, but the concentrated fertilizers very little. These 

 are sold at from $25 to $45 a ton. Many growers consider them hurtful to the burning qualities of tobacco, to the 

 flavor, and, in any excess, to the growth of the plant; but there is a substantially unanimous opinion that well-rotted 

 barn-yard and stable manures are the best fertilizers. Some planters have reported excellent results from commercial 

 fertilizers, and adverse reports are to be taken with the allowance that growers have had but little experience with 

 them. Lands, when manured, may be cultivated indefinitely in tobacco ; without it, the best lands will be exhausted 

 in three or four years. 



For rotation the best crops of tobacco are raised after clover. Wheat usually follows tobacco after the second 

 or third year, though often after the first. Clover is sown on the wheat and plowed under in June of its second 

 year's growth, and the land is immediately planted in tobacco. The tobacco crop is also made to follow wheat, corn, 

 potatoes, and other crops. 



TRANSPLANTING OF TOBACCO. 



When the leaves of the plants are of the size of a silver half-dollar, if a rainy season comes they are set out; 

 hut if the weather is dry, a season is sometimes made by making with a stick a hole in the hill about 4 inches deep, 

 which is filled with water. Plants thus set out will stand any ordinary spring drought and grow at once. In 

 general, farmers wait for a natural season, and, if it can be avoided, weak or spindling plants from a crowded bed 

 are never set out. Plants are set in rows, 3 feet 4 inches apart and 18 to 22 inches in the rows. The soil is 

 thoroughly manured in March and April, and plowed twice, once in April or May, and a second time in June or 

 July, just before planting. The cultivator and the harrow are used after the second plowing to level and pulverize 

 the soil. Six thousand plants of Connecticut Seed-Leaf are planted to the acre, the same number of Pennsylvania 

 Broad Leaf, ami eight thousand plants of Cuban tobacco. Transplanting begins about the 10th of June, and 

 continues to the 10th of July. 



CULTIVATION OF TOBACCO. 



The cultivation of tobacco is performed with a cultivator between the rows twice or three times during the 

 season, and each time the rows are carefully hoed out. The cultivator is started as soon as the plants have fairly 

 taken root and commenced to grow. The plants are not hilled up, growers preferring flat culture. The lioe. 

 however, is used to loosen the soil around them and to destroy weeds. 



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