Maize, or pi’-ki, and beans, practically the only other seeds planted, are planted annually in “hills.”  The rows of “hills” are quite irregular.  Maize, as is also millet, is planted immediately after the first abundant rains, occurring early in April.

The Bontoc man has three varieties of beans.  One is called ka’-lap; the kernel is small, being only one-fifth of an inch long.  Usually it is pale green in color, though a few are black; both have an exterior white germ.  I’-tab is about one-third of an inch long.  It is both gray and black in color, and has a long exterior white germ.  The third variety is black with an exterior white germ.  It is called ba-la’-tong, and is about one-fourth of an inch in length.

Transplanting

Transplanting is always the work of women, since they are recognized as quicker and more dexterous in most work with the hands than are the men.

The women pull up the young rice plants in the seed beds and tie them in bunches about 4 inches in diameter.  They transport them by basket to the newly prepared sementera and dump them in the water so they will remain fresh.

As has been said, the manure fertilizer is placed about the sementera in piles.  The women thoroughly spread this fertilizer with their hands and feet when they transplant (see Pl.  LIX).  When the soil is ready the transplanter grasps a handful of the plants, twists off 3 or 4 inches of the blades, leaving the plant about 6 inches long, and, while holding the plants in one hand, with the other she rapidly thrusts them one by one into the soft bed.  They are placed in fairly regular rows, and are about 5 inches apart.  The planter leans enthusiastically over her work, usually resting one elbow on her knee —­ the left elbow, since most of the women are right-handed —­ and she sets from forty to sixty plants per minute.

When the sementeras are planted they present a clean and beautiful appearance —­ even the tips of the rice blades twisted off are invariably crowded into the muddy bed to assist in fattening the crop.

As many as a dozen women often work together in one sementera to hasten the planting.  There are usually two or three little girls with their mothers, who while away the hours playing work.  They stuff up the chinks of the stone walls with dirt and vegetable matter; they carry together the few camotes discovered in this last handling of the old camote bed; and they quite successfully and industriously play at transplanting rice, though such small girls are not obliged to work in the field.

Camotes are also transplanted.  The women cut or pick off the “runners” from the perpetual vines in the sementeras near the dwellings.  These they transplant in the unirrigated mountain sementeras after the crops of millet and maize have been gathered.

The irrigated sementeras are also planted to camotes by transplanting from these house beds.  This transplanting lasts about six weeks in Bontoc, beginning near the middle of July.