The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-18


 -funcertainty are being removed from
 kobacco culture in Connecticut. Only
 Ia few years ago raising tobacco was lone of the most risky undertakings fupon which a. farmer could venture
 Possible causes of the. partial or total Hoss of his crop were as numerous as fthe fingers on both his hands. Avoid kRble dangers were poor seed, wrong Hy-composed fertilizer, the inroads Of Hnsects and others that might be hnentioned. What were deemed un- Eavoidable risks where drouth, exces- teive rain. hailstorms when the plants Fwere nearing maturity and pole-sweat kwhen the tobacco was hanging Tn kthe barns One crop out of every hive produced under these conditions tusuafly resulted in no profit or in pos e1tive loss to the farmer.
 Il Growing tobacco under cloth has lremoved, one by one, all these sour Ices of danger except violent winds. kof the sun by day and the moisture Ethat comes in at night. The sun does Enot bake the soil as it does the open Fields, especially after a rain, dl- keide the tent is several deegree9 high Fer than outside of it. The summer Ebreezes which sweep the open fields kat morning and night scarcely touch fthe plants that are under cloth In Esects are wholly excluded. No to- (bacco under cloth has ever been kxeriously injured by hail, unless, as Happened in Simsbury and North kBloomfeld recently, the hailstorm Twas in reality tornado. The eff Efciency with which most of the to- kbacco tents have stood up against the teevere storms of the past three weeks Eshows that the cloth-covered process Las a whole is not likely to be ser kstorms. The new system of ''prim- Fling" that has come in with the cloth Lowering, which means gathering the Eleaves as they ripen and leaving the bstalks in the fields, has gone for to hacflitate the curing of the tobacco lin the barns. The exclusion of the kstafk. which is mainly composed of fwater, from the barns diminishes the tamount of moisture which must be ldrfed out of the tobacco during the tcuring process This process is also khastened by the prevalent practice of kkeeping up charcoal fires in the barns Eduring the first three days after the E1eaves have been strung and hung 1.lI, ldanger of the loss of any tobacco twhile it is hanging in the barns. That (which is gathered in July and August trnay be fermented, sorted and packed flor delivery in three ensuing months fThe tobacco raiser may now get his money for his crop almost as soon as if he were raising potatoes or onions. But the uncertainties of the wealth ger remain and must always remain. Of Hate years there has been little trou- ,during the few weeks the tobacco fplants are in the ground. But, for Hour or five years, there has been a "dry spelP' in June and July, and in tsome years this has given even the lraisers of tobacco under cloth some tanxfety, although the soil under cloth iholds the moisture from the early rains much longer than the open ffields To put the grower complete tly at his ease 1t is desirable for him to command an artificial supply of wa ter for his fields. a thing which $
 not difficult anywhere in the whole tobacco section of Connecticut. A 1 demonstra tion of how artificial irri- gation may be employed on tobac- co plantation has been provided on
 the 55-acre place of Alfred w. Olds
 in Bloomfield. This plantation is
 worked this year by MT. Olds in part nership with his brother. Herbert V. folds. and was formerly known as the Eggert place.
 The Olds brothers were we'll quali- fled for handling the problem of to- bacco field irrigation, Albert w.. Olds having been, for some time after leav- ing college, connected with the New bort News Shipbuilding company, in its draughting department, while his iyounger brother, who had qualified as
 a civil engineer, was in the service
 of the Central New England Railroad
 company. They decided, on investi- ggating the subject, that no method of
 distributing the water through sprink- This had been tried in the cloth-cov-
 cred fields in Florida, where many
 acres were equipped with sprink- ling outfit at lost of $400 an acre.