280 SOILS AND PLANT LIFE 



seeds. When the plants have pushed their way up out 

 of the ground, most of them are cut out, leaving those 

 not destroyed about eighteen inches apart in the row. 



It is an excellent practice to use only large, plump seeds, 

 planting fewer of them per acre and applying cottonseed 

 meal as a fertilizer for the growing crop. 



Cultivation. — A sweep cultivator which stirs the ground 

 two or three inches deep is commonly used. It leaves a 

 loose mulch on top, conserves the moisture, helps to make 

 plant food available, destroys weeds and brings about 

 that continuous, rapid growth so essential to a satisfactory 

 yield of cotton. 



211. Harvesting the Crop. — One of the characteristic 

 scenes of the South is that of cotton picking. No machine 

 has ever been invented to gather cotton satisfactorily, 

 for the bolls ripen successively, which means that the 

 field must be gone over several times. 



Picking usually begins in late August and continues 

 until the first of November. Fitted over the shoulders 

 of the pickers and traiUng out to a distance of perhaps 

 ten or twelve feet behind them, are the picking sacks, 

 in which the seed cotton is placed. From these sacks it 

 is transferred to deep-boxed wagons and hauled to the gin. 



212. Ginning the Cotton. — From the wagons the 

 cotton is unloaded or drawn by suction into the hoppers 

 where revolving saws remove the lint from the seed. 

 The lint is removed from the saws by revolving cyhnders 

 and drawn by suction into a condenser, from which it 

 passes on to the press. The fiber comes out from these 

 power or screw presses in bales of five hundred pounds. 



As the seeds are separated from the fiber by the saws, 

 they drop through openings and those which are not 



