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125 chapter ii y The Labor of Tobacco, How It Is Seeded, Transplanted, and Weeded, and When to Plant It All the work and cultivation of tobacco, in its correct order, consists of: seeding, transplanting, trimming, topping, picking the leaves, harvesting, stemming, twisting, wrapping, joining, rolling, wrapping in leather, and pressing. All of these we will discuss in the following chapters. Beginning with the plant, place the seeds in a seedbed that is very rich with manure, or in an interior area cleared by burning, where there are lands for this prepared the same year of the seeding. The usual time of year for seeding is during May, June, and July. After the seed has sprouted, some wild grass will also be growing around it. This should be removed carefully, so that through lack of attention, the baby tobacco plants are not removed with the aggressive grass. Once the plant is more or less one palma high, it leaves the garden where it was born for the fenced fields or livestock areas where it will grow. The more manure in this earth, the better. However, if cattle have been in the area for a long time, it will be necessary to remove some of the manure to prevent its fresh strength from burning the plant instead of helping it. This new land should have plowed furrows in it so that the plants can stand apart and be seen. The distance from one furrow to the next is five palmas, and the plants should be two and a half palmas from each other to allow them to grow and spread easily without becoming entangled. The plants should be put in holes one palma wide and as deep as the hoe. These holes are then filled with soil containing a lot of manure. With daily vigilance and care, the plants should be inspected to see if caterpillars are present. If so, these should be killed right away to keep them from eating the tender plant. In addition to the caterpillar , the plant’s normal enemies are ants, aphids, and crickets. When the caterpillar is young, it eats the base of the plant or its roots. When 126 The Cultivation of Tobacco the caterpillar grows, it then eats the leaves. Ants do the same thing. Because of that, they put leaves from manioc or pepper trees in the furrows where ants appear so they will eat those and not the tobacco. If they eat the tobacco, the leaves are ruined. The aphids are a kind of black mosquito, slightly bigger than a flea. They chew holes in the leaves which, when damaged like this, cannot be twisted. When the plant is young, crickets eat it down to ground level. When the plant is larger, they fearlessly eat the leaves. Once the leaves have grown more, take the topsoil from the seedbeds where they were first planted and place it around the base of the plant. However, in the winter do not press this soil down very hard, because everything is humid. In the summer, pack it down more firmly to protect the plant. The moisture, which is less, gives the plant its first nourishment. Those who plant it do this. Once the plant is full grown, with eight or nine leaves, depending on how vigorous it is growing, the flower or bud at the top is removed before it sprouts. This process is also called “topping.” Since the plant now lacks this bud, it will grow new ones at the base of each leaf. All these have to be discarded (and this is called “debudding”), so that these do not sap nutrients from the leaves. This treatment of the plants should be done every eight days, more frequently if the weeding is also being done, and should continue until the leaves are mature. This occurs when they have yellow spots on them or when the bottoms of the stems are black inside. This is done normally during the fourth month after the plants have been transplanted. ...

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