■50 THE CULTrRE Of TOBACCO. 



harvested too gieen will always have a tendency to retain a greenish 

 shade, and will be deficient iii grain and slightly bitter when smoked. 

 There is also such a thing as an over ripe leaf. Over ripe leaves 

 cimtain more water and less organic material than they did when at 

 the proper stage for harvesting. This is due to the fact that m the 

 ripening leaf the chlorophyll grains gradually change to other forms, 

 and thus cease their function of forming new organic matter, whde at 

 the same time consumption of the already stored material continues. 

 An over ripe leaf will .-leldom cure up an even colour and will be 

 brittle rather than elastic. 



Ihe ripeness ot shaded tobacco cannot lie determined by the same 

 indications as can the sun-grown crop. A general appearance of 

 maturity is the nnly guide that the jilanter will have. 



HARVESTING. 



When the proper stage of ripeness has been reached the time has 

 arrived for the harvest. All portions of the tobacco plant do not 

 lipen at the same time, and because of this fact two ditferent methods 

 of harvesting have been developed. In the one system the whole 

 plant is harvested on the stalk when the middle leaves of the plant 

 are mature, while in the other system each leaf is primed off as it 

 becomes ripe. The first sy.stem is accomplished with the minimum of 

 labour, although it will not produce s • large a percentage of properly 

 ripened tobaccn as the second system, for when the middle leaves are 

 at the proper stage of ripeness, the lower leaves are over ripe, and the 

 top leaves still green. The advocates of the stalk cutting or whole 

 plant system maintain that a large percentage of the material in the 

 stalk is transferred from the i-talk to the leaf during the process of 

 i:uring, and this claim seems to be substantiated by expeiience. This 

 system is the one largely used for the bulk of the tobacco in America, 

 but the finer grades of cigar leaf and a portion of the Bright tobacco- 

 are harvested by the single leaf method. In some places a combi- 

 nation of the two methods is adopted, the lower leaves being haivested 

 singly as they ripen and the upper half of the plant taken off with 

 the stalk. Wheie the leaves are primed they aie at once placed in 

 baskets and hauled to the curing barn. At the barn these leaves are 

 strung on twine by means of a needle run through the end of the stem, 

 or else the twine is looped around the end of three or four leaves at 

 a time and the bunches of leaves left several inches apart. This 

 twine is then fastened to a four foot stick, and the stick is hung on 

 the tier poles in the cuiing barn. The aim is to get about forty 

 leaves ti) each stick. 



When the stalk system of curing is u.sed, the plants may be cut 

 off at the surface of the ground with one stroke of a knife, and then 

 strung on the i'our foot cuiing stick by means of a detachable iron 

 spear head that is fitted into the end of the stick. Another method 

 is to, with one stroke of the knife, split the plant from the top 

 nearly to the ground, and then tn sever it below the end of the 

 vertical ciit with a second stroke. The jilant can then be placed 

 astride the curing stick. The S]ilit plants will cure nut more 

 rapidly than the speared j. hints, but will sutler a slightly greater 

 lo.ss of weight. With small jilants, as the Cuban tobacco, "the stalk 

 is too small to stand niui-h splitting, .-ind is spi'ai'cd into the stick. 



