CULTURE AND CURING IN VIRGINIA. 201 



The percentage is larger in the yellow than in the dark belt. In the yellow belt planters sometimes make a 

 specialty of tobacco and raise but small crops of the cereals, devoting their efforts mainly to the money crop. A 

 majority, however, attempt to make their farms self-sustaining by raising enough of home supplies. 



In the Valley counties, extending from Rockbridge to Washington, tobacco is not a staple crop, except in 

 Rockbridge, Botetourt, Roanoke, and Montgomery. In these counties the area occupied varies from 2 to 5 percent, 

 of the cleared land. This section is just beginning to develop the capability of its soils to produce a staple of high 

 grade. 



Of freshly-cleared land the proportion planted to tobacco in the dark or shipping belt varies from 10 to 40 per 

 cent. ; in the bright yellow belt, from 15 to 50, with occasional instances of 100 per cent. ; in the Valley, from 8 to 

 30 in the eastern to 75 per cent, in the southwestern section. 



South Middle and Piedmont Virginia still retain much original forest. Of these wooded lands fully nine-tenths 

 is adapted to the production of tobacco. Beside the forests, there are in this territory large tracts grown up in. old- 

 lield pines and brush, capable, when cleared, of making the finest kinds of tobacco, especially the yellow and the 

 filler types. 



The varieties of forest growth on preferred tobacco soils differ somewhat in the several belts. In the dark belt, 

 hickory, dogwood, red-bud, poplar, walnut, beech, and oaks indicate a good rich soil; in the yellow belt, white and post 

 oaks, hickory, dogwood, pine, maple, chestnut, whortleberry, etc., are found on lands adapted to the manufacturing 

 types; and in Montgomery county an isolated section, covered with pine, sugar maple, beech, hickory, buckeye, etc., 

 is well suited to the yellow types. The forests on the mountain slopes of the Valley consist for the most part of 

 pine, oaks, maple, and hickory ; on the lower and limestone lands, of walnut, varieties of the oak, poplar, buckeye, 

 etc. In this portion of Virginia a much larger proportion of original forest is standing, but owing to the rugged 

 and mountainous character of large tracts of land not more than three-fourths of the uncleared soils are adapted 

 to the culture of tobacco. 



During the past ten years tlie yield per acre has not materially decreased or increased in the greater portion 

 of the tobacco belt. A decreased product per acre is general in the south-side counties of the Middle division, except 

 in Buckingham and Dinwiddie, where the average yield has been somewhat increased by improved culture and more 

 liberal manuring. In Piedmont the quantity produced per acre has increased to a considerable extent, in Greene 

 county especially, the more careful planters having improved their lands by judicious rotation, in which clover is 

 an important factor, and by a liberal use of fertilizers. In Botetourt county, of the Valley district, the increased 

 yield has been from 20 to 30 per cent., mainly due, as is claimed, to the use of commercial manures of good quality. 



Various rotations in connection with green-manuring and other fertilizing are practiced, with a view to recuperate 

 worn soils and maintain the productiveness of the lands. Throughout the dark-shipping and air-curing districts 

 the mode usually practiced by the most successful farmers is to sow wheat after tobacco and follow with clover, to 

 stand one or two years ; then rotate as before, applying domestic or commercial fertilizers, or both, to the tobacco 

 crop, which helps the succeeding wheat and rarely fails to secure a good crop of clover. This is called the "lot 

 system", and is the prevailing one. Another rotation is tobacco, wheat, and clover two years ; then corn, followed 

 by wheat or oats; then clover again. 



Clover, following close after a tobacco crop, properly manured, thrives on most of the soils of the Middle 

 and Piedmont divisions, and the acreage of this best of all plants for green-manuring is annually increasing. 



In the Valley district substantially the same rotation is followed the grasses, sometimes alone and sometimes 

 mixed with clover, following wheat, preceded by tobacco. 



Green fallowing is but little practiced in the yellow tobacco district, a green clover fallow, beside bringing an 

 unwelcome army of cut-worms, being unsuited to the production of this variety of tobacco, the plant being too coarse 

 and ripening with too green a color, and being, therefore, difficult to cure .properly. This is true also of tobacco grown 

 after wheat, as only on fresh gray lands and old fields, or following corn, will the product possess the requisites 

 for the yellow type. 



An application of ashes and plaster, at slight cost, will produce a luxuriant growth of pea-vines on land so poor 

 that it will not yield five bushels of inferior corn per acre. Yellow tobacco may be grown on a pea-fallow to great 

 advantage by the use of commercial fertilizers without detriment to color. 



THE USB OF FERTILIZERS: HOW APPLIED QUANTITY AND COST PER ACRE. 



The use of commercial fertilizers has largely increased since 1870, and in every neighborhood of all the counties 

 of Middle and Piedmont Virginia manufactured manures or guanos are purchased annually by tobacco planters, 

 often by those who seem to be utterly careless of the home-made article. The ease and rapidity with which these 

 fertilizers are put into the soil is strong recommendation for their use; and, when honestly compounded, they return 

 a fair profit upon the amount invested in their purchase In Goochland and Louisa counties from 70 to 80 percent, 

 of the tobacco crops are fertilized with special manures, using from 150 to 300 pounds, either in the hill or in 

 drills, at a cost of from $3 to $9 per acre. In Caroline more farm manures are used in connection with the 

 commercial fertilizers. In Hanover it is the practice of some excellent farmers to plow in 12 to 15 cords of yard 



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