HEMP, in botany. See CANNABIS.
The raising and dressing of hemp scarcely differs from the raising and dressing of flax, but in the following particulars.
Hemp requires a light, free, dusty, and even a sandy warm soil; which if not naturally rich, must be made so by manure. New broke-up ground does not answer for hemp, producing it thin and poor upon the stalk. Hemp does well to follow beans. The ground should be ploughed and harrowed three or four times, a fortnight or three weeks intervening between each time. In some parts of Lincoln and Holland, the soil is naturally so free and rich, that it will produce hemp constantly year after year without manure. The leaves which fall off the stalk help to manure the ground. It is frequently sown with a view to clear the ground of weeds; which it does most effectually, growing fast, and soon checking every weed but mugwort, which is picked out with a fork.
It is sown about the first of May; so thin, that about four pecks are sufficient for an English acre; and the ground must then be covered as much as possible to preserve the seed from the birds, who are very fond of it.
The taper-topped stalk which does not bear the pods, is called the female; though in fact it is the male, scattering from its bloom a small dust, which impregnates the pods of the busy-topped; which last is commonly, tho' improperly, called the male or earle hemp.
When hemp is the object of the farmer more than a crop of seed, the whole should be pulled when the stalk begins to grow yellow, and the earth remaining about the roots should be beat off to prevent more growth: but if the seed is wanted in its greatest perfection, the stalks bearing the pods must be pulled before the uppermost pod begins to open; the earth should
Hemp should not be beat off from the roots; it should be stooked in sheaves upon the field, to dry and win as corn; and the top of these stooks should be covered with undergrowth or the like, to preserve the feed from the birds.
Hemp is sooner watered than flax, and the canals must be deeper.
In keeping the feed, care must be taken to preserve it from rats, mice, and such like vermin, who are all fond of it.
It is dressed as coarse flax, but is sooner dressed; and its greater length requires more care, and renders it more troublesome in the handling, especially in the skutching of it by the water lint-mills with horizontal skutchers, when it must be folded double. What is too coarse and strong in the stalk for the hand or foot machines, may be broke and peeled by the hand. See FLAX.