54 
CULTURE OF INDIGO. 
CULTURE OF INDIGO. 
I noticed some letters in your last volume upon 
the culture of indigo ; and as it is one of the subjects 
upon which you originally invited my attention, I 
will proceed to state as shortly as may be, what I 
learned in my youth upon this matter. My father 
grew indigo, as a crop, until I was sixteen years of 
age, and was considered to have made a good article. 
The laborers are divided into gangs of ten, and 
are expected to cultivate 30 acres to the gang. The 
soil should be moist whether loam or clay, well 
drained, and divided by small trenches 24 feet apart. 
The indigo is drilled 14 inches between the drills. 
The seed is very small, and should be soaked for a 
night, then mixed in dry ashes or sand, and sown 
along the drill carefully and regularly. Four quarts 
of seed carefully sown and well mixed in ashes is 
enough for an acre. In this climate the seed should 
be sown in the first week of April. When it first 
comes up, it resembles white clover or lucerne, 
and should have the grass carefully picked by hand 
from the drill. When it is an inch or two high, it 
must be weeded between the rows, and the soil 
loosened about the roots. Three weedings are 
enough before the first cutting, which should com¬ 
mence about the first week of July, or as soon as 
the indigo begins to throw out its bloom. 
Indigo Vats.—Fig. 10. 
For every set of ten hands, there should be what 
are called a set of works. These formerly cost 
about $100 or more, and were a vat or tank, made of 
plank two inches thick, well joined. This vat 
(a) is 20 feet square, stands upon posts 4 feet 
from the ground, and is kept tight by wedges, driv¬ 
en into the sleepers upon which the plank rests. 
The vat is 3 feet deep, and is called the steeper. 
Along side of it is another vat (6), 20 feet by 10, 
occupying the space between the bottom of the 
steeper, and the ground, into which the water is 
drawn, in which the indigo is steeped, when ready 
to be beat, or churned as we may say. At the end 
of this last vat, a small tank or cask ( e ) must be 
placed, to furnish lime water in the process of beat¬ 
ing. The liquor is drawn from the steeper (a) by 
a spigot at the bottom of the vat, along the beater (6). 
Lengthwise of this, is stretched a beam (c), rest¬ 
ing on its upper ends, and revolving on journalls, 
and furnished with cross arms, to the ends of which 
are fixed open buckets without bottoms, containing 
about two gallons each. Two men, standing on 
this beam with a handspike fixed to the long beam, 
alternately plunge the open buckets right and left, 
thus churning the liquid until it begins to show a 
blue fecula, which is produced by small quantities 
drawn from the lime cask (e). 
Indigo is so easily injured by the sun after being 
cut, that the cutting begins and ends in the after¬ 
noon. As it is cut by the common sickle or reap¬ 
hook, it is carried either to a shed, or conveyed and 
placed immediately in the steeper, where it is care¬ 
fully spread. When the indigo is placed in the 
steeper from 2 to 2 1-2 feet deep, pieces of scant¬ 
ling are placed across the indigo weed to keep it 
down and from rising as the water is pumped upon 
it out of the reservoir. This operation should be 
accomplished about sunset; and a steeper of this size 
usually takes about an acre of ordinary indigo weed 
to fill it. The time of steeping is usually from 9 
to 10 hours, depending upon the temperature of the 
water ; the warmer it is, the sooner the process is 
over. But when the water assumes a light olive 
color, it is time to draw the water into the beater, and 
the process of beating commences, which is conti¬ 
nued until the fluid becomes lighter in its gene¬ 
ral shade, and blue fecula begins to show in the 
water ; which the sooner begins from small quanti¬ 
ties of lime water having been let run by a spigot 
from the lime water cask, from time to time during the 
process. After the fecula shows itself distinctly in 
the water, the vat is left to repose for four hours, 
when the water is slowly drawn off by holes at dif¬ 
ferent heights so as to allow the indigo to subside 
to the bottom ; as soon as it has done so, it is care¬ 
fully collected into bags which are hung up to drain. 
W hen sufficiently drained, it is placed in boxes 2 feet 
by one foot to dry under gentle pressure. When 
sufficiently firm, it is divided into squares, by rule 
and some sharp instrument, and placed under the 
shade to dry—commonly, in the upper story of a 
house. The varieties of indigo were produced, by 
the time in steeping, in beating, in liming. The 
shorter steeping and less beating produced the flotent 
or light blue indigo. But in looking back upon this 
process, I am astonished at remembering the indiffer¬ 
ent and often turbid water that was used in steeping 
the indigo; which must have injured its quality. 
In the dying houses of England, a filtering appa¬ 
ratus is made by four boards nailed together, 20 
feet long, and a foot square, which is filled with 
coarse sand or fine gravel, with the ends stopped by 
two other boards, with very small holes in them, 
and the water used, is drawn through this wooden 
filter, from the reservoir, out of doors, to the vat 
within the house, which purifies the water—this 
could be easily done here. Again, the frequent 
rain showers that occur in our common summers 
must have often disturbed both the process of steep¬ 
ing and beating, and thus injured the indigo. From 
all these causes, the warm process first introduced 
by Dr. Anderson of Madras, and described by him 
in the Annual Register of Calcutta, and given in a 
note appended to Bryan Edward’s history of the 
West Indies, must be altogether preferable. This 
process is under cover, and it is only steeped two 
hours, the water being heated to 160 degrees. A 
house 30 by 20 feet would contain two steepers, 10 
feet square, and two beaters 5 feet by 10, the heat¬ 
ing apparatus being placed between them; and 
would as I think take off twice the quantity of in¬ 
digo in a day, besides continuing the process after, 
by the usual one, when the nights had become too 
cold. 
In Georgia the indigo gave two cuttings; and 
usually 60 lbs. of indigo, in the two to the acre 
