Planting Density effects

 

1859  Planting Density effects what you get..... 

It talks about how plant density affects how the plants grow and what they produce

What I trying to point out is how the plants are planted, is really the biggest difference in what you get out of it.....

Planting plants closer together produces plants, which are taller, less branches, weaker stem, and more tender. (finer fiber)

Planting further apart produces a shorter plant, more branches and much tougher with a strong stem. (coarser fiber)

“Two things, then, must concur to make a useful fibrous plant, for not only must the bast be long, pliant, and in bundles of the proper size, but the wood which is to be rejected must be brittle, with short cells not much hardened or not strongly adhering together. Flax and hemp are, in our own country, the best specimens of these favorable conditions, but we have other plants nearly if not quite as well adapted to the manufacture of useful fiber; and other countries show that nature has not been stinted in her supply of materials capable of meeting one of the first wants of mankind.

Influence of culture upon fibrous exogens
If we have been successful in communicating a clear idea of these conditions, the ready conclusion must be that differences in degree, even in the same plant under varying circumstances, must frequently occur, the wood may become harder and greater in amount the bast weaker and less in quantity, and the necessary inference might be drawn that judgment and skill in the culture of the plants would favorably modify these conditions. Experience, in advance of anything like an accurate knowledge of plant structure, has shown that this is true at least for our common fibrous crops. Single stalks of hemp or other fibrous plants allowed to grow at a distance from each other, or from other plants would furnish but sorry specimens of fiber, if, when collected, they were managed as the results of an ordinary crop. A single plant invariably shows a hard woody stem and a coarse fiber in the bark. But when a number of plants are grown in a small space, everyone knows that they grow longer and are more slender than when left to themselves. In this way the strength of the wood is much diminished, and the fiber of the bark, if less abundant, is finer and possibly longer. If the plant has a tendency to branch, this is prevented and the neat preparation of fiber from a branching stem is no easy matter.
The close cultivation of cotton, okra, and other plants which we are accustomed to see separated from each other, would probably show a fiber in the bark far more capable of treatment by the ordinary processes than would be suspected by most persons. A knowledge of correct principles is here of the greatest advantage, when new materials are concerned. The influence of soils and the details of the treatment of the crop are beyond the bounds of this article.”

1859
Report of the Secretary of Agriculture …
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1860
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