The best way to harvest is to cut the stalk when ripe near
the ground with a sharp knife. In doing so avoid cutting off
the suckers or injuring them. This should be done by bending
with the left hand and cutting from below up. The leaves should
not be stripped from the stalk. Care should be taken not to allow sand
to get on the leaves, as it very generally injures the sale of the crop.
If the plant has not begun to sucker when cut it will very soon do so.
Three or four suckers, if the plants healthy and the soil good, should be
allowed to grow. The second, third and fourth crops should be treated in
the same way. The fourth crop is a small one but the leaves serve as a
filler, or for smoking tobacco, and if gathered it makes an excellent
fertilizer. The stalks should all be saved for this purpose and are
valuable with which to mulch fruit trees. It will very greatly increase
the third and fourth crop if cotton seed meal is worked around the
plant after the second cutting or even the first. The great trouble with
inexperienced growers is to determine when the tobacco is ripe. Ex-
perience, however, soon settles thismatter and it is not difficult to learn.
The novice ought not to be deterred from planting because of the want
of this knowledge. Color of leaves does not prove the best rule to deter-
mine the ripeness of the plant, although when the leaves begin to
lighten in color or spotted it is a good sign. A better rule is that when
the leaves are doubled and pressed between the fingers, they will snap.

 THE CURING SHED OR BARN
may or may not be a costly building in our climate. For those who are
beginners it is not necessary to build a barn especially for the purpose
if there is a gin house on the premises or a log house that can be used.
I have seen the very best quality of tobacco cured in a log house, the
joists of which were not six feet above the floor. A common wage n shed
will serve the purpose to begin with, if closed on the sides by rough-
edge boards. The tobacco crop of the Station is cured in the upper part
of a wagon and tool house. A great many persons will doubtless begin
the cultivation of tobacco by planting from one-half to five acres. In
their interest the above is written. For those who are determined to
make it their business and who wish to build barns they can do so
cheaply with rough lumber.
 The points to be observed are, ventilation when needed, and the
shutting it off. There should be doors at each end of the barn large
enough to drive a wagon through. There is no necessity for a
wooden floor, but the sills ought to be laid on brick or rock in our
climate to prevent rotting, and the space between the sills and the
ground closed with plank. Frames from the top to the bottom
should be built inside on which to place poles or laths on which to
hang the tobacco to dry. A sharp hollow spear that will fit a lath,
made sharp enough to pierce through the stalk should be used. The
stalk pierced and slipped on the lath or small pole and repeated until
the pole is full, not allowingthe leaves to touch each other, and then
put in place on the frames, is the cheapest, easiest and most expedi-
tious way of hanging tobacco in the barns. It, however, may be tied
by strings to a pole, or with a knife a slit may be cut in the stalk and
one end of 'the small pole or lath may be sharpened and pushed
through, but these methods are both costly and tedious. Care
should be taken to economize all the space possible, and the number of
stalks to each lath or pole is to be settled by the distance Of frames apart
on which they are to rest. A shed 30 by 60 feet and from 10 to 14 feet
high is sufficiently roomy to cure five or six acres of tobacco. Persons
who desire to build fancy barns can do so, keeping in view the necessity
of ventilation both above and below.