22 BULLETIN 486, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



rows. After the cane is well up, the space between the rows is culti- 

 vated to kill the weeds and to keep the soil in tilth, much as for 

 any other crop. (Fig. 7, /•.) The early cultivations, before the 

 root systems have developed much, should be relatively deep, but 

 later in the season shallow cultivation must be practiced, to avoid in- 

 juring the fine feeding roots that spread out from the cane near the 

 surface. The suckering of the cane can be controlled to some extent 

 by the cultivation. Throwing the soil toward the plants tends to re- 

 strain suckering. On the other hand, leaving the bases of the plants 

 exposed favors suckering. Therefore, to get a good stand from the 

 minimum of planting material, the soil is withheld from the rows 

 as far as feasible during the early stages of growth. Later, how- 

 ever, when the season is too far advanced for new suckers to mature, 

 it is desirable to prevent suckering, and the soil is therefore more 

 liberally plowed against the rows. Where the drainage is poor, as in 

 most of the Louisiana cane belt, this ridging up of the rows is car- 

 ried to an extreme, leaving deep drainage furrows between the rows 

 to carry off the surplus rainfall quickly. In irrigated sections, on 

 the other hand, the farmers strive to keep the cane row low as long as 

 practicable, to enable them to run the irrigation streams through the 

 rows, probably coming up to about flat cultivation by the end of the 

 first year. 



The only difference in the cultivation of the fall-planted cane 

 is to bar off as early in the spring as the weather and the condi- 

 tion of the soil will permit and to rake off about the time growth 

 will start. To bar off means to plow a furrow away from each side 

 of the row, usually with a 1-mule turnplow, leaving a ridge about 

 a foot wide at the row in which the cane lies planted in the fall 

 under a covering of 4 to 6 inches. This ridge is then raked off by 

 hand with hoes or by cultivating crosswise with a harrow, leaving 

 only 1 to 2 inches of soil over the cane. 



If a stubble (ratoon) crop is to be taken, the stubbles receive some 

 special attention. Shortly after harvesting, the trash is burned off 

 (unless it is desired to incorporate it into the soil to increase the 

 humus content), and the stubble row is "wrapped" by throwing a 

 furrow toward it from each side with a 1-mule turnplow. The 

 remainder of the space between the rows is plowed with a turnplow 

 at the same time. In this condition it is left through the winter. The 

 treatment in the spring is to bar off and to rake the stubble with a 

 harrow, about as already described for fall-planted cane. On the 

 big plantations in Louisiana, where the rows are on high ridges and 

 the rootstocks consequently are relatively long, instead of thus rak- 

 ing the extra soil off the stubbles it is customary to " shave " them. 

 For this a special implement is employed, having either a horizontal, 



