The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom: Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.Simmonds, P. L. (Peter Lund)
Science
The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom: Considered in Their Various Uses to Man and in Their Relation to the Arts and Manufactures; Forming a Practical Treatise & Handbook of Reference for the Colonist, Manufacturer, Merchant, and Consumer, on the Cultivation, Preparation for Shipment, and Commercial Value, &c. of the Various Substances Obtained From Trees and Plants, Entering into the Husbandry of Tropical and Sub-tropical Regions, &c.
Simmonds, P. L. (Peter Lund)
Botany, Economic
_Planting the Dadap tree_.--This is a species of Erythrina, probably
_E. indica_, or _E. arborescens_; that used for the purpose in the
West Indies is _E. Corallodendrum_. In Java, as soon as the coffee is
planted, the operation of planting the dadap tree is commenced. The
best sort of dadap comes from Serp or Mienyak; it is smooth and
broad-leaved, and shoots up quickly. Thick young stems are chosen,
about three feet long, and the lower part is pointed off. If the dadap
is moist or juicy, it should be cut twenty-four hours before it is
planted. The dadap is planted uniformly by measuring the cane in the
same way as the coffee itself. Between every two rows of coffee one of
dadap is planted, not on a line with the coffee plants, but
alternately with them; thus, if the coffee is eight feet by eight, the
dadap is sixteen by sixteen. The dadap is planted to the depth of a
foot, with somewhat of a westerly inclination, in order that the
morning sun may fall on a larger surface of the stick. The ground must
be stiffly trodden round the bottom of the stem, and the upper part of
it should have some kind of leaf tightly bound around it to prevent
the sap from escaping. When the coffee and dadap plants have thus been
put out, every fifth day the young plantation should be carefully
inspected, and a picket placed wherever there is a failure, as a mark
to the planter that a new plant is there required. This operation of
replacing failures is carried on all through the wet season, and the
dadaps which have not succeeded are at the same time changed.
_Keeping up the estate_.--In the first six months after planting, the
estate should be cleaned each fortnight with the hoe; the ground being
well moved and the weeds taken out. Those weeds which are too close to
the plants to be removed in this manner, must be pulled out with the
hand. When the plantation is thus wholly or partially cleaned, the
earth must be taken off the weeds, and they must be collected and
thrown on the pathways.
The weeding in this manner gives at first a great deal of trouble, but
it is most advantageous in the long run, as the weeds are thus easily
kept down.
Great care must be taken to do away with an old custom of burying the
weeds in large holes on the estates. It conduces to bad and slovenly
habits, such as cutting off the tops of the weeds by wholesale, and
thus giving the plantation an appearance of cleanliness, whilst it, in
fact, is as dirty as ever. This is soon discovered by the weeds
showing themselves again above ground in a very few days, and even if
they rot under ground, they breed insects which are very hurtful to
the bushes, and the seeds vegetate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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