98 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
March 
growth, a loss of color and vigor in the plants, and a 
parching np of the margin of the lower leaves; below 
ground the plants will he found to have only a tap-root 
the lower part of which is sometimes decayed, whilst in 
other cases, sections of the root will be found perfectly 
rotten, with sound portions above and below such sec¬ 
tion, whilst at the same time the vegetable matter under 
the surface, will generally be covered with a white mould. 
To avoid a catastrophe so pregnant with mischief, the 
farmer should know the nature of the disease in order 
to he qualified to judge of the fitness of any means of 
escape. I incline to adopt the theory of Liebig on this 
subject, which is at least very plausible, if not true. 
He thinks that in such a case, the covered vegetable 
matter is undergoing putrefaction, a state of decay in 
which it not only is unfit to feed vegetables, but has 
power to rob all bodies in contiguity, of oxygen, in or¬ 
der to carry on this decay, thus even destroying or 
“firing” the roots of living plants. 
What renders his theory more plausible is, that a 
habit of early fall plowing, which allows such matter 
full time to decay into a brittle mass, will generally over¬ 
come this danger. By a parity of reasoning—if this 
fall plowing shall have been neglected—the better prac¬ 
tice in such a soil would be to cross-plow, occasionally, 
in the course of the hemp-sowing period, not commit- 
ing the seed until the latest allowable moment. 
The seed being good, the ground well prepared, and 
the crop having passed the dangers of baking and firing, 
—that is, having attained a height of six to ten 
inches, scarcely anything but a hail storm can disap¬ 
point the grower’s hopes of a crop, the harwesting of 
which will be his next concern. This operation consists in 
cutting, curing, binding and stacking the crop,—all, if 
possible, without rain; for it will be found that the lint, 
by every process of preparation, is better when the plants 
are not allowed to grow dark by exposure to rain, dews 
and hot sun; whilst for complete success, in the white or 
in the water rot, a fair staple is indispensable. Cutting is 
generally performed by hand, using a straight knife, of 
fine steel, some fifteen inches long, which in operating 
should dip with the horizon at about the same angle as 
a mower’s scythe. The handle attached, is about two 
feet long, making with the edge of the knife an angle of 
about 100 degrees. 
In about four days after the cutting, the plants, in 
fair weather, are gathered and tied into bundles, and if 
possible on the same day put into stacks containing the 
yield of two acres each, of a fair crop. Keep all the 
branches—cutting, binding, and stacking—as near to¬ 
gether as curing or drying the plants will allow. This 
practice guards against the loss of labor and injury to 
the crop, sometimes experienced when the plants are 
bound into bundles, and left standing over the field in 
small shocks. Hemp thus left in shocks, sometimes gets 
so wet as to require being spread again upon the field, 
before stacking. It is the work of one active man to 
cut, bind and stack one acre in five days. 
Modes op Preparation. —Hemp is rotted for the 
brake in three several methods, called dew-rotting, wa¬ 
ter-rotting, and snow or white-rotting. The first meth¬ 
od is that by which far the greater portion of American 
hemp is made ready for market. The crop being har¬ 
vested in August and September, remains in stack until 
the hot sun of October gives way to a milder, spring¬ 
like temperature. It is then spread, generally upon the 
field on which it grew, until the fluids in the circulation 
and the cambiose matter which binds the fibres together 
decompose, when the fibres contract and burst off the 
stalk. Then the plants are gathered and set up in 
small shocks over the field, where it will remain two or 
three months without injury, during which period, say 
from January to April, the breaking is performed by 
active laborers. One great reason why this mode of 
preparing hemp is so popular with the American culti¬ 
vator, is, that it affords comfortable and profitable em¬ 
ployment for winter. Seventy-five to one hundred 
pounds is deemed a moderate day’s work. Using the 
hemp-brake brings all the muscles into active exercise, 
and a man -will prepare 100 pounds of hemp without in¬ 
convenience from cold, at a temperature too disagreea¬ 
ble to be abroad at other farm-work. 
The second method, or water-rotting, is a much more 
tedious and expensive mode of preparation; but after 
having had several years’ experience, and after having 
been most intimately acquainted with the details of two 
establishments beside my own, I do not hesitate to say 
that it is entirely practicable to water-rot in this coun¬ 
try with success, and will say, further, that if precau¬ 
tionary means be adopted in the plan of operations, 
there is but little risk of health. My own pool, which 
answered remarkably well, is one hundred and ten by 
thirty feet surface, and four feet deep, excavated near a 
small stream. The lower wall is water-tight—the bal¬ 
ance a rough stone-wall, capped with timber, anchored 
down by the w T eight of the wall—a middle timber an¬ 
chored to the bottom, as high as the plates on the wall, 
divided the pool into two sections, fifteen feet wide, so 
that cross-timbers, 16 feet long, prevented the hemp 
from rising above the caps or plates when the pool was 
filled and the water let in. 
Such a pool will contain the produce of about four 
acres. Water was conducted into this pool over the top 
of the wall, and let off by pipes at the bottom. The 
pool being accessible on all sides by an easy grade, three 
teams w T ith light sleds would empty it in half a day, the 
water being previously let off, and the bundles allowed 
several hours to drain before being handled. Two men 
grasping the same bundle, raise it, and by a swing of 
the arm horizontally, throw it endwise upon the sled 
upon which the bundles are removed, and in frosty 
weather placed, still bound, against ranges of poles to 
dry; or, the weather being warm, are spread upon grass 
lands for the same purpose. Operating in this way for 
three or four successive seasons, and requiring the ope¬ 
rators to change their damp clothes immediately after 
emptying the pool, no case of sickness ever occurred in 
a family of between forty and fifty persons, that was 
supposed to owe its origin to any of the details of the 
process of water-rotting hemp. 
When the medullary exudations, uniting the fibers of 
the hemp-plant, have been extracted by immersion, the 
bark is detached from the woody part of the plant, and con¬ 
tracts so as to burst and showthe wood,sometimes through¬ 
out the whole length of the stalk. In this stage, being re¬ 
moved from the pool and dried, it is ready for the brake. 
