Others merely "listed" the fields by first running a furrow with a shovel plow where each cotton or corn row was to be and filling it with a single furrow of a turn plow from either side; then when planting time approached they would break out the remaining balks with plows, turning the soil to the lists and broadening them into rounded plant beds.

This latter plan was advocated as giving a firm seed bed while making the field clean of all grass at the planting.

The spacing of the cotton rows varied from three to five feet according to the richness of the soil.
The policy was to put them at such distance that the plants when full grown would lightly interlace their branches across the middles.
In March the corn fields were commonly planted, not so much because this forehandedness was better for the crop as for the sake of freeing the choicer month of April for the more important planting of cotton.

In this operation a narrow plow lightly opened the crests of the beds; cotton seed were drilled somewhat thickly therein; and a shallow covering of earth was given by means of a concave board on a plow stock, or by a harrow, a roller or a small shallow plow.
Within two or three weeks, as soon as the young plants had put forth three or four leaves, thinning and cultivation was begun.

Hoe hands, under orders to chop carefully, stirred the crust along the rows and reduced the seedlings to a "double stand," leaving only two plants to grow at each interval of twelve or eighteen inches.