Norwich bulletin., 1910-12-10
PERSISTENT WEEDS REQUIRE PERSISTENT WORK

tVrtt,n Specially for The Bulletin)
 own up that the problem 0f weeds fs one tup much for me. How on earth f0 IIf .rm Ao they win stay kiilcdY 1f somebody win tell mo that secret IlI test it and make n present of the rule Iu his name to my fellow farm nrs ao they can bless him every day Iu their prayers. of course, ] mean by i1llng weeds. some way to kill Iust The weeds and not everything .lNN.
 For good many years I've been n six ing the question Of my fellow farm ers and gardeners. I've been reading every article on the general subject in pII thn fnrm papers I can get hold Of, TNr been studying the methods rec commended by tho various agricultural experiment stations. and I've been testing and experimenting and sweat nE mFacir f. personally. with these two hands. have worn one haud-hoG Iu tho lust len years, fighting weeds. lni there's ittle left Of it but tho han dia and goose mock" And its the Ih.rd handle that poor hoe has had, .up.
 Aa result of much reading and more bacit-aching work. I've arrived
  ly e1sy way Co Kill weeds Is Co sit on the fcnce-and watch somebody else Ip it That is easy enough, but. alas, It isu't Rt all effective. The durned .h.ugs won't stay dead. Chop off their uruds and thsy promptly poke mp their urms or their legs and start new heads on thn ends Of 'ern Dig 'enn out. root nud branch but If you leave one root Iet as big as a hair and as long as a finger nail. it will immediately start a new crop. Rake 'em all up with a fine fouthed comb. drag 'em or Co the road eide and burn 'em, with turpentine und kerosene and gasoline. Before you can get hack Co your weeded neld, .1me dear little birdie birdie will have dropped half dozen fresh soeds o1 it Co set the thing going again.
 An old Shaker friend said to me once that he believed the earth was as fun Of weed-seecs. to its very center. as plum pudding is of raisins.
 Why" said hs. T once dug sixty foot deep well In one week after it was dug weeds were growing out of the dirt taken from the very bottom of and thrown on the top of the heap. Tell mo whore they came from 2" An other case of "Topsy." thought I: nev- or came from anywhere; jest grow cd"
 Ky old father spent a good part of his life fighting four especially hateful W ecds-quack grass. Canada thistles live forever. and that wild snspdragon known locally as stinkweed. sometine es elsewhere called butter and eggz" The two latter named he used to fight with salt Whene Der he found a stray plant of either he would spread at least a painful of salt over it and the surrounding territory. sometimes cov- ering n plot eight or ten feet in dia m - eter Ills meadows and pastures were Epotted with these desd-b brown places where every decent plant had been killed until the whole farm sometimes looked as if it had had ths smallpox. Eu it was not often that the weeds failed to stick up their pesky head g around the edges of his circles, with ir a year or two after he had saIted the original plant. l. myself, continu- of cattle salt on isolated patches oi these pests in ths last ten years. But thers are more patches now. and big ger. than when I took up the contest
 ousek grass the old gentlemen usec 70 fight by blowing it up and diggins the roots out painfully and slowly. Oi course. he never got absolutely all th' little pieces Of root out of the ground His deep and thorough cultivation simply gave a better start to tho re. Inainder. The invariable result wa! l heavier and denser growth of quacl he second season. All his work avail -d was to give him a slight respite fo one crop. Then he did it all ovei again. Canada missiles he used to pull up by the roots, using pair of long uosed blacksm!th's tongs to save hi ringers from the prickers, and thel dose the salt This didn't kill tn things completely. but it surely did dis outrage them. so that. after stxtl ~ears of constant pulling and saitfinl he declared his firm belief that h would have 'em about whipped" if h rould only keep at 'em a few year more But his plan isn't so success ful with me.
 One nsishbor of mine with lots c land says he never allows duack-gras s fo worry him: he just Iete the stu, grow fl 1t wants to and he finds tha it will pretty soon run itself out' l is sucin a greely feeder, such a verit able veR~t able hog at growing, tina it evernually exhausts the availabl rood in tie sofi and dies of sheer star Nation- But again. this don't wor with me. I have one small pate where I tried. twenty years ago t f=ise stra wberrfes The duack choke the plants and finally killed them. have let the patch severely alone fror that time Last summer I tried { fork up a bit of 1t and found the root sg thick and matted that we had [ dR9p down through them with an ol aye before we could lift a turf les tlTan two feet square. There weT some dead roots in the mat, but mof live ones. I think the stuff is actual csnni5alistic that when a big ol root dies two or three young root promptly so to feeding on it,-so tha the more of it dies. the more humus takes to nourtsh new weeds.
 "ousOS won't grow on poor ground ssNF another ueighbor. Perhaps
 won on his poor ground, but 1t wi or mine. l have 3 gravel ridge so DOG that tt won't grow beans without fer tiHzsug the drills but st will gro ranc~ A No. 1 duacS anywhere an