East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1913-08-16
MUSTARD WEED
IS WORST PEST
Does More Damage Than Jackrabbits
says Instructor at Agri-
cultural College.

OREGON AGRICULTURAL COL
LEGE, Corvallis, Ore, Aug. 16.-
Especially all the jackrabbits of
oregon We're confined TO the Colum-
bia river basin they would do less
damage to the wheat fields than the
tumbling mustard is now doing" says
Professor y. d. Scudder, agronomistof
the Oregon Agricultural College. I'm
many fields it reduces the yield one
half and throughout the entire wheat
belt it is rapidly growing worse. Far
mers are beginning to count the cost
per acre, and when put into dollars
and cents it runs very high. AL
though he may not have realized it
the damage it does the wheat grower
is the heaviest tax he has to pay.
This Jim Hill mustard is a bad
weed pest for these reasons: 1t is
common throughout eastern oregon.
When ripe the head of the plant
breaks off and blows for miles, while
the tough pods open a little at every
jump, dropping few hundred or
thousand seed A full grown normal
plant bears about one and half
million seeds, which are covered with
resistant seed coats ana retain their
vitality for ten to fifteen years, ger
minating only when brought near the
surface The plant is a very heavy
feeder upon soil food and moisture
and hastens soil depletion. And it
makes harvest difficult and to some
extent Injuries the feeding value of the
crop.
I'm the work of eradication farm
ers should cooperate. Waste places
should be clipped and burned before
the seeds ripen In draws and the lee
of hills where it collects it should be
! burned. Fences that cross the di-
rection of prevailing winds may have
two wires strung on cleats nailed t.
the tops of the posts, to help catch
and hold the travelling weeds. Rail
! way companies will be able to CO
! operate with the farmers, and clear
their right of ways. Seed of grair
crops should be entirely free of tht
mustard feed. Badly infested crop
should be harvested with headers, a
the combined harvesters scatter tn,
weed seeds.
Following the harvest, the fell
should be thoroughly disked with tn
double-action type of machine tina
will best chop down the stubble ant
prepare a shallow seed bed in whicl
the seeds will mostly sprout at tn
first rain fall The young plants ma
be destroyed before winter by a sec
ond disking. In very foul ground an
other crop of weeds will come up i
the following spring, and the diskin
should be repeated. Most Of the seed
remaining in, the ground will b
brought up by the disking and ma
be effectually, destroyed in the earl
summer plowing. This treatment wi
not only destroy the mustard, bu
most other seeds as well. 1t ais
saves the moisture and adds humus
the soil.
Another method of great value o
dry farming lands Is to seed part {
the farm to alfalfa in drill rows. thre
feet apart The alfalfa may then b
cultivated so thoroughly that at tn
end of the year the field will be er
tirely free from weeds of any kinC
If the best strains of alfalfa are seet
ed the succeeding crop, harvested fc
seed, will be worth more than tn
wheat crop. At the end of three {
four years the field for this crop ma
be moved to another section of tn
farm, until the entire farm Is cleane
up.
when the weed Is first attacke
in bad areas the iron sulphate spra
should prove OF great assistance. B,
nothing can take the place Of cult
waited crops or cultivated summer ia
| lax IN ha oxfa iyo of lie