This is one of the staple articles of American agriculture. It is much
cultivated in Kentucky and other contiguous states. Its market value is
so fluctuating that many farmers are giving up its cultivation. The
substance of these directions is taken from an elaborate article from
the pen of the honorable Henry Clay. Had not the length of that article
rendered it inconsistent with the plan of this volume, we should have
given it to the American people as it came from the hand of their
greatest statesman, who was so eminently American in all his sentiments
and labors.
_Preparation of the Soil_--should be as thorough as for flax;--this can
not be too strongly insisted on. Much is lost by neglect, under the
mistaken notion that hemp will do about as well on coarse, hard land.
Plants for seeds should be sown in drills four feet apart, and separate
from that designed only for the lint. The stalks should be allowed to
stand about eight inches apart in the rows. Plants are male and female,
distinguished in the blossoms. When the farina from the blossoms on the
male plants (the female plants do not blossom) has generally fallen,
pull up the male plants, leaving only the females to mature. Cut the
seed-plants after the first hard frost, and carry in wet, so as to avoid
loss by shelling. Seed is easily separated by a common flail. After the
seeds are thrashed out, they should be spread thin, and thoroughly
dried, or their vegetative power will be destroyed by heat or decay.
They should be spread to be kept for the next spring's planting, and not
be kept in large bulk. Their vegetation is very uncertain after they are
a year old. Sow hemp for lint broadcast, when the weather has become
warm enough for corn-planting. Opinions vary as to the quantity of seed,
from one bushel to two and a half bushels per acre. Probably a bushel
and a peck is best. Plowing in the seed is good on old land; rolling is
also useful. If it gets up six inches high, so that the leaves cover the
ground well, few crops are less effected by the vicissitudes of the
weather. Some sow a part of their hemp at different times, that it may
not all ripen at once and crowd them in their labor. Cutting it ten days
before it is ripe, or allowing it to stand two weeks after, will not
materially injure it. Hemp is pulled or cut. Cutting, as near the ground
as possible, is the better method. The plants are spread even on the
ground and cured; bound up in convenient handfuls and shocked up, and
bound around the top as corn. It is an improvement to shake off the
leaves well before shocking up. If stacked after a while, and allowed to
remain for a year, the improvement in the lint is worth more than the
loss of time. There are two methods of rotting--dew-rotting,
=and= water-rotting--one by spreading out on grass-land, and the other by
immersing in water; the latter is much the preferable mode. The question
of sufficient rotting is determined by trial. Hemp is broken and cleaned
like flax. The stalks need to be well aired and dried in the sun to
facilitate the operation. Extremes in price have been from three to
eight dollars per hundred pounds: five dollars renders it a very
profitable crop. Thorough rotting, good cleaning, and neat order, are
the conditions of obtaining the first market price. An acre produces
from six hundred to one thousand pounds of lint--an average of about one
hundred pounds to each foot of height of the stalks. Hemp exhausts the
soil but a mere trifle, if at all; the seventeenth successive crop on
the same land having proved the best. Nothing leaves the land in better
condition for other crops; it kills all the weeds, and leaves the
surface smooth and even.