12 THE RUSSIAN THISTLE. 



seeding. This is the theory of summer-fallowing, but, unfortunately, 

 it has seldom been fully carried out in the Dakotas and adjoining 

 States. The land there has usually been left untouched after the 

 spring plowing. Instead of a barren fallow or 'resting period/ a crop 

 of weeds is grown, which drains the land almost as much as a crop of 

 grain, and the soil, instead of being cleared of weeds, becomes a veri- 

 table hotbed of them. Summer-fallowing, even if the land is kept 

 barren by cultivation, gives comparatively little benefit except to clear 

 out the weed seed. This object may be attained just as well by raising 

 a crop which will pay the expenses of cultivation. Beans, peas, clover, 

 millet, or rye may be sown, pastured, and plowed under for green fer- 

 tilizer at little expense, and it will improve the land vastly more than 

 barren fallowing. Millet and oats combined may be grown and cut for 

 hay. This crop will choke out nearly all weeds, while the few that do 

 grow will be slender and weak, producing comparatively few seeds, and 

 many will be cut with the hay before producing any seed. 



"Roadsides, Fire Breaks, and Waste Places. If the Russian thistle is 

 to be kept out of cultivated fields it must be exterminated on roadsides, 

 fire breaks, and waste land where the sod has been broken, and in all 

 places where it has obtained foothold. 



* ' In many places the prairie roads, which are usually mere unf enced 

 driveways, are lined on each side by hedges of robust Russian thistles 

 growing between the beaten track and the prairie grass, as ragweeds 

 grow along roads in the East. A road machine may here be used to 

 good advantage, the scraper being so set as to take as thin a layer of 

 earth as possible, and weeds and all being thrown to the middle of the 

 track. Fire breaks can be kept free from the Russian thistle and other 

 weeds most economically by frequent use of the harrow. When covered 

 with large dry tumbleweeds, as they frequently are, instead of being 

 a protection they become a source of great danger in times of prairie 

 fires. 



"In the sand hills, on public lands, and in the scattered weed patches 

 of cattle ranges there seems to be no direct compensation for the labor 

 expended in exterminating the weeds. The thistles, however, must 

 be destroyed in these places, and the work may be done at a cost small 

 in comparison with the damage these plants would cause if allowed to 

 produce seed. 



"The great windrows of Russian thistles found banked up against 

 wire fences in early winter suggest the use of fences to check the dis- 

 semination of the weed by rolling. The thistles, however, will easily 

 bound over a fence, especially after a bank reaches its top ; and at any 

 time the whole pile is liable by a shift in the wind to be sent off in some 

 other direction. Prompt burning would be of some value, and this 

 would be possible if metallic fence posts were used. 



