THE CULTURE OF FLUE-CURED TOBACCO. 95 
able. A strong effort should be made to secure a perfect stand as 
soon as possible. This 1s a very important point in securing the 
best results from tobacco. 
CULTIVATION OF THE GROWING CROP. 
In order to encourage a quick start in growing, a good horse 
cultivation and careful hand hoeing should be given the newly set. 
tobacco as soon as it has become established, generally after a week 
or ten days. A little fresh earth should be drawn about each plant, 
but care should be taken not to loosen the newly established roots. 
A second hand hoeing may be needed about two weeks later; but in 
any case the young tobacco should be horse cultivated every week or 
ten days, according to conditions, until about topping time. After 
topping, cultivation should be discontinued, as the tobacco will ripen 
better if the cultivation is not continued too late. From four to six 
horse cultivations can generally be given to advantage, although 
many growers usually give but three. If the soil is at all hard, 
the first one or two cultivations should be deep, to thoroughly loosen 
up the soil and render it mellow. A double-shovel plow with nar- 
row teeth is useful for this purpose. Later on, as the roots begin 
to spread through the row, only shallow cultivation should be prac- 
ticed. For these later cultivations especially, the ordinary 5-toothed 
cultivator, fitted with an 18-inch or 20-inch sweep on the rear tooth, 
is a very satisfactory implement. The sweep attachment fills the 
furrows made by the teeth and works the soil toward the plant. 
Such a slight raising of the soil along the row is undoubtedly de- 
sirable; but it is open to question whether the excessive bedding of 
the row with the turning plow, as commonly practiced in “ laying 
by ” the crop, as it is called, at the last cultivation is desirable, ex- 
cept perhaps in very wet years or on soil characterized as wet or 
** spouty.” 
; DISEASES AND INSECT ENEMIES. 
Specking, or “ diseasing,’ as it is generally called, is the most 
common disease injury to which tobacco in the flue-cured district is 
subject. It is belheved to be a fungous disease, disseminated by spores, 
perhaps of several species. The trouble is favored by a moist atmos- 
phere and by sappy tobacco. The only practical method of reducing 
the injury from this trouble, so far as known to the writer, is by 
using potash more hberally in the fertilizer, which seems to increase 
the resistance of the plant to the disease. 
Root-knot, caused by nematodes or eelworms of semimicroscopic 
size, also dees great damage, particularly on some of the lighter soils 
of the New Belt section in South Carolina and North Carolina. 
Nematodes also attack a long list of plants other than tobacco, and 
