THE FARMERS' CABINET, 



AND 



AMERICAN HERD-BOOK, 



DEVOTED TO 



AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, AND RURAL AND DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. 



' The Productions of the Earth will always be in proportiou to the culture bestowed upon it." 



Vol. v.— No. 4.] 



11th mo. (November,) 15th, 1840. 



[Whole No. 70. 



KI3IBER & SHARPIiESS, 



PROPRIETORS AND PUBLISHERS, 



No. 50 North Fourth Street, 



PHILADELPHIA. 

 Price one dollar per year. — For conditions see last page. 



To the Editor of tlie Farmers' Cabinet. 

 Eradication of Weeds. 



Sir, — You have been addinfr line upon line 

 and precept upon precept, in the pages of the 

 Cabinet, on the necessity of keeping crops 

 free from weeds, showing that the land will 

 produce a crop of something, depending, how- 

 ever, unon the will of the owner what that 

 shall be, whether of thistles, rag-weed, corn 

 or grain ; and I cannot but call the attention 

 of my fellow-readers to the consideration of 

 a subject of the highest importance, but 

 which seems least of all to have obtained the 

 care of the husbandman generally. The 

 truth of the above is strongly exemplified in 

 the present state of the crops of multicaulis, 

 wherever they have been neglected and left 

 to shift for themselves, which has been very 

 much the case in this, the day of their humi- 

 liation, throughout the country. All will re- 

 member the encomiums which were lavished 

 upon tliis crop, even so late as the past sea- 

 son ; that they would " flourish any where, 

 and under any circumstances," was a part 

 only of their peculiar properties, but their 

 present appearance convinces us that they 

 depended, in a very great measure indeed, 

 for their good looks and abundant foliage, 

 upon good food and superior cultivation, for 

 wherever this has been withheld, their state 

 is wretched in the extreme. I saw, yester- 

 day, an acre of these trees, which had been 

 planted in the spring, and have never since 

 been cleaned ; the result is, the weeds are 

 taller and stronger than they, and a thousand 

 times more abundant, with bushels of seeds, 

 ready to shed and sow the land for seven 

 years to come, while the foliage of the morus, 

 instead of being of that large growth and 

 deep green hue, is small and mean, and the 

 colour of a peach tree in the yellows — no 

 longer fit for pies or tobacco ! 



This is a lesson which ought not to be lost 

 upon us; it furnishes a means of calculating 



Cab. Vol. V.— No. 4. 



the value of clean cultivation ; and without 

 such ocular demonstration, few of us would 

 have ever been able to form an estimate of 

 the vast difference, which really exists. I 

 declare for myself, that I have never before 

 seen the evil of neglected cultivation in the 

 light that I now do, nor can I believe that my 

 neighbours understand, even at the present 

 time — with a crop of weeds five feet in 

 lieight, and of proportionate substance — to 

 what a degree tliey are robbing their crops of 

 their proper nutriment ! And if it be true, 

 as has been often said, that a " single root of 

 grass amongst wheat, has been found to draw 

 a portion of the nourishment from six plants 

 of the wheat," it is only to be wondered, that 

 some crops continue to get any at all, when 

 buried beneath a covering of them as high, 

 oftentimes, as the fences ! 



Adjoining the field containing the multi- 

 caulis trees, and upon exactly the same qua- 

 lity of land, is a large breadth of sugar-beet, 

 of remarkable size and most luxuriant growth, 

 but they were planted in rows at a proper dis- 

 tance, and have been kept perfectly clean ; 

 and while the morus has turned to a crop of 

 iveeds, here the crop is beets, which will give 

 from fifty to sixty tons per acre ! Now, to 

 have converted these into a crop of weeds, it 

 would only have been necessary to permit 

 them to take possession of the soil and keep 

 it, and the end would have been accomplished. 

 As it is, it does one good to calculate the 

 quantity and value of the manure which this 

 crop will yield on being fed the coming win- 

 ter — far greater than the whole expense of 

 raising the crop — to say nothing of their 

 value as food for stock during that trying pe- 

 riod ! It is quite unnecessary to add, that the 

 person who owns this crop is not the owner 

 of the morus ; his crops are uniformly large 

 and heavy, because they are kept clean from 

 weeds. 



It is calculated, and I believe the estimate 

 is far too low, that a heavy crop of weeds 

 consumes at least one-half the dung that is 

 applied in preparation for a crop of grain — 

 how pleasant it is then, to reflect, that while 

 I am carrying manure to my four-acre field 

 a mile off, one-half my dung and labour goes 

 to support the weeds, and one-half the re- 

 mainder is lost in the diminution of the crop 



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