Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-08-16
PHILOSOPHY OF THE WEEDS
WILD THINGS OF GREAT VALUE
IN ENRICHING LAND.
Instead of Burning Troublesome
Plants They Should Be Added
to the Compost Heap.
From the Independent.

from inc independent.
| 1 had the idea in my boy hood that weeds
grew only to keep me busy in the onion
| bed just when l wanted to go fishing
There are some weeds just mean enough
| for that, so l still believe but in general
have found out that nature knows very
well what she is about In sowing and
growing these things which We think
We have no use for. In the first place.
most of them have some specific adapta-
biity, which we have to find out and it
does a vast deal of good to keep on a
still hunt of this sort Only the other
day, when l was nearly seventy, l found
out that piGweed made splendid green's
| and in Florida scoke is called the southern
spinach. Now these two plants look
very different to me from what they did
formerly, when | only made ink of the
crimson berries and read Thoreaus en-
thusiastic description Of poke color in
October.
/ have a row of scoke poke four
rods long in my garden for February
greens. Then the sorrei, which with us
is only another weed, down there comes
up so swiftly and grows so rapidly that
il is another delicious table food Like
our northern dandelion. ii is also a CAPT
tai food for fowls. \ yard of twenty
hens will devour three bushels i'll a day.
if thrown to them. In this way nature
has lot of fine balances. and we shall
probably keep on discovering them till
most of our. weeds are put to direct use.
Chickweed is excellent bird and hen feed.
and what is nicer than 10 see flock of
soldiinches cracking the seed Of a ncld
of bull ihistles? In Florida. i'll a maze of
all sorts of vegetation, came on a bunch
of bull thisties, and it was the prettiest
thing, just then. | had ever seen. 1T
stood for all New England and New
York: so let it grow. but 1t seeded. and
there were no goldiinches 10 eat the seed,
and it spread 50 that in two years ii gave
me job TO extirpate il. 1t did bring me
a genuine bumblebee. and | must find a
substitute for the goldfinches.
Nature Has a Purpose.
But what l want you to see is that ma
ture has not just gone ahead making
things without a reason: that is with
only one out of hundred or thousand
worth the while. These weeds have a nice
logical purpose. and they will all get ex-
planned in due time; only it will take con-
Siderab BILE thinking to find ii all out Mean
while, if you and j cannot use these
things ourselves nature will use them for
some body or something else. The philoso-
ply OF field culture or farming is to make
soil, and the only thoroughgoing farmer
is nature herself. She works to the end
of soil making all the time and every
time. and for that purpose every weed
ually and separately we can in the lump.
have a grudge against any one who
| wastes one of my weeds. | do not wish
to have it burned nor thrown in the road.
1t is property, it is wealth, and therefore
should go into the compost pile. That
weed stands for SO much carbon. SO much
phosphorus. so much potash and some nj
trogen. and these are the food for my
corn and beans and potatoes: and after
that for my COW and myself When a
whole state full of people burn up all the
weeds that grow during the whole year
they are simply stupid. and when. after
that. they buy at a big cost lot of COM
mercial fertilizer to do a fraction of what
the weeds would have done IL composted
they are criminally ignorant.
Why do bristles have prickers. and why
do berries have thorns? Evidently so that
the plants can get large. and not only
propagate themselves by seed but make
more compost. You will be amazed when
YOU begin this compost business to find
what an enormous mass you can aceumu-
late in the course of year from common
weeds. Gather them from Your garden
and from the roadside put with them your
barnyard manure and then all the loads