CULTIVATION OF THE CASTOR BEANS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 245, 6 February 1875, Page 3

CULTIVATION OF THE CASTOR BEANS.

A correspondent of the San Diego Union furnishes that jourifljb ith the following: “Last spring M. A. Burton, who is a woman of rare energy and business capacity, decided to put under cultivation about one hundred acres of land on the Jamul ranch. It was too late to plant grain, the land was not fenced and there was no chance for irrigation. So it was decided to attempt the cultivation of castor beans. The land wSs ploughed and laid off as if for corn, and the beans dropped in furrows aud covered with a plough. It required 219 lbs to plant the 100 acres. When the plants came up they were thinned out, leaving only one to each hill, about five feet one way and three the other. The land was cultivated once, but not irrigated, and needed no fencing, as no stock will touch the plants. About August the beans began to ripen and picking commenced. They grow in the shape of “spikes,” from eight to fifteen inches long, containing a large number of pods, each of which contains three beans. The variety cultivated is different from the tree kind grown as an ornamental shrub; it forms a plant about six feet high, and is an annual The peculiarity rendering it profitable to cultivate is that when ripe the pod bursts open with such violence that the beans are thrown out to a distance of several feet. The method of gathering and preparing for market is as follows: Every day the ripe spikes are gathered by hand, put in seeks and hauled to the “popping ground,” which is a snare of about an acre, made smooth and hard like an old-fa hiened buckwheat thrashing ground, Here the

spikes are spread, and during the day they open from the heat of the sun, throwing out the beans. Each morning the straw is raked off, the beans shovelled up, cleaned in a fanning mill, and sacked, ready for market. By the time the ground is once picked over, it is ready for another picking, like cotton, and the season, commencing in August, is not yet over. From eight to ten men have been employed picking on one hundred acres. The yield is estimated at 1500 pounds per acre, worth four cents per pound, or a gross total of §6O per acre. The expense of cultivation &c., is estimated this year at one half this amount, but is greater than it probably will be another season, owing to inexperience and preparing new land. There is probably no crop so early raised that will yield so large a return.