GENERAL INFORMATION. 257 



The covering of brush is generally allowed to remain upon the bed until the plants are nearly large enough to 

 sot out, but it may be necessary to remove it temporarily, in order to pick oft' any leaves or other trash which the winds 

 are apt to drive upon the beds. To prevent the accumulation of leaves upon a bed prepared in or near a forest 

 wicker fences, built of brush interwoven between sticks driven into the ground, have been found very efficient. 



Trenches dug across the upper end of the bed and along the sides prevent flood-water from sweeping over the 

 surface. IJeavy rains are sometimes very injurious, washing the seeds from a portion of the surface and depositing 

 them in depressions. 



It is the usual custom to defer manurial applications until the plants are up and well started. Liquid manures 

 are frequently used at this stage. A tight barrel, half filled with cow dung, is placed near the bed, water is added 

 to fill the barrel, the mixture is stirred until it is a semi-liquid mass, and this is sprinkled on the bed with an old 

 broom. Some prefer a solution of guano, a gallon of this fertilizer being mixed with a barrel of water and sprinkled 

 upon the plants. These applications may be repeated one or more times with decidedly good results. Land plaster 

 has proven to be a good application, giving a deep green color to the plants, indicating vigorous and healthy growth. 



A hundred methods are practiced or suggested to prevent the ravages of the flea-beetle, but only one plan 

 has proven really effective to cover the bed closely with canvas or unbleached cotton cloth. A frame is first 

 made around the bed of planks 8 or 10 inches high, care being taken to close every crevice between the planks 

 and the ground. A few wires may be stretched across, the better to hold up the cloth, which is stretched over 

 the frame and closely tacked upon the edges. In place of the wires, a small quantity of light brush thrown upon 

 the bed will help sustain the weight of the cloth. A better plan would be to construct a number of smaller frames, 

 of proper width and not more than 6 or 8 feet in length, upon which the cloth may be stretched and neatly 

 fastened, a sufficient number of these frames being provided to cover the intended plant-bed. Such frames, with their 

 covering, could be removed when no "longer needed and stored for future use. If the cloth is treated with a single 

 coat of white lead and oil, such as is used for the first coat of outside work on wood, it will last several seasons 

 with ordinary care. Still another plan may be found more economical. The frames may be made and properly 

 braced by cross-pieces let in flush with the upper edges of the planks. The cloth or canvas may be some three 

 inches longer and wider than the frames, and hemmed upon the edges, and eyelet holes may be worked along the 

 edges, two feet or less apart, in which cords may be fastened by which to stretch the cloth and tie it down closely 

 over the frames to nails, hooks, or wooden pegs driven into the outer faces of the frame planks, three or four inches 

 below the upper edges. Other devices will suggest themselves to the intelligent farmer, by which he can make the 

 cloth covering effective, easily handled, and economical. 



When the plants are nearly large enough to be set out this protecting cover should be taken off in the 

 morning for two or three days and replaced in the afternoon, that the plants may be gradually hardened by 

 exposure to the direct rays of the sun and better fitted for transplanting. 



It often happens that a dry season occurs after the first drawing of plants, and those that remain on the bed 

 cease to grow, turn yellow, and perhaps die. One or two planks and a few blocks of wood should be provided. A 

 block on each side of the bed will support a plank, upon which the person drawing the plants should stand. 

 Nothing injures a plant-bed so much as compacting it when wet, and as plants are almost always drawn when the 

 soil is wet no pains should be spared to prevent treading upon or otherwise compressing the bed. If from any 

 cause the plants begin to turn yellow and wither away shade must be provided by building over the bed a low 

 arbor of green boughs and watering the surface copiously. This will almost always give new vitality to the 

 enfeebled plants. 



A practice of many good planters is to resow the beds with about half the quantity of seed originally used as 

 soon as the first plants appear, so that if the first plants are destroyed in any manner the seed last sown will be 

 undergoing the process of germination and a second crop of plants will be assured. 



In Tennessee and in North Carolina plant-beds may be prepared and sown at any time from the 1st of November 

 until the 1st of April. Prepared while wet or frozen, a plant-bed rarely does well. Beds are usually burned in 

 February or March ; but if the burning is done in the fall, when the soil is dry, less fuel is needed, and the prepared 

 bed may be left to the meliorating influences of the winter freezing, to be sown in the early spring. Many good 

 farmers sow the fall-burned beds as soon as prepared, but there is some risk in so doing. Heavy rains and melting 

 snows are apt to wash or drift the seeds, and so disturb their uniform distribution. One of the best tobacco-growers 

 in the South says that a rod of land well burned in the fall will furnish as many good plants as twice the area 

 burned in February or March. 



In some parts of Virginia and Maryland, and in districts where wood and brush are scarce, farmers have 

 succeeded in growing good plants upon plats of clean soil without burning by the use of guano, raked into the 

 surface, or as a top-dressing, applied at the time of sowing the seed, about 40 pounds per hundred square yards. 

 Others select a standing bed, one that has produced plants well, in a warm location, neither too wet nor too dry; 

 coulter over the bed after the planting season is past and before any grass or weeds have gone to seed upon the 

 plat; cover with straw, leaves, or brush with the leaves on, or with all of them, so thick as to completely hide the 

 surface and prevent vegetable growth. A bed is thus made ready for burning at some dry time from November to 



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