Rules for planting various Crops
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Skeat, Walter William
The following rules have an evident bearing upon the subject of vegetable animism. They were collected at Langat, in Selangor:—
The time to plant Sugar-cane is at noon: this will make it sweeter, by drying up the juice and leaving the saccharine matter. If you plant it in the early morning its joints will be too long, if in the middle of the day they will be short.
Plant Maize with a full stomach, and let your dibble be thick, as this will swell the maize ear.
For Plantains (or Bananas) you must dig a big hole, and the evening is the time to plant them. The evening is the quicker, and if planted after the evening meal they fill out better.
Plant Sweet Potatoes on a starry night to ensure their filling out properly (by getting plenty of eyes?)
Plant Cucumbers and Gourds on a dark moonless night, to prevent them from being seen and devoured by fire-flies (api-api).
Plant Cocoa-nuts when the stomach is overburdened with food (kalau kita ’nak sangat berak); run quickly and throw the cocoa-nut into the hole prepared for it without straightening the arm; if you straighten it the fruit-stalk will break. Plant them in the evening, so that they may bear fruit while they are still near the ground. When you pick seed cocoa-nuts off the tree somebody should stand at the bottom of the tree and watch whether the “monkey-face” of each seed cocoa-nut, as it is thrown down, turns either towards himself or the base of the tree, or whether it looks away from both. In the former case the seed will be good, in the latter it is not worth planting.
Plant Rice in the early morning, about five, because that is the hour at which infants (the Rice Soul being considered as an infant) get up.