CHAPTER V 

 The Economics of Weeds 



EVERY farmer realizes that weeds are among the most 

 important factors in success or failure in agriculture. 

 They occur wherever the soil is cultivated and stand ever 

 ready to take the place of the crop planted if proper tillage 

 is not given. They not only rob the crop of sunshine and 

 needed space in earth and air, but they 

 also deprive the soil of more or less of its 

 available plant food, draw out its mois- 

 ture, and according to the present belief 

 of some authorities actually poison the 

 soil for other plants. 



Weeds, however, are by no means to 

 be considered an unmixed evil. In many 

 cases they are rather to be thought of as 

 a blessing in disguise, for they compel 

 that tillage of the land which is neces- 

 sary for the conservation of moisture and 

 the healthy growth of most crops. " The 



truth is," writes L. H. Bailey in a famous 



, MEADOWSWEET 



paragraph, "that weeds always have 



been and still are the closest friends and helpmates of the 

 farmer. It was they which first taught the lesson of the 

 tillage of the soil, and it is they which never allow the les- 

 son, now that it has been partly learned, to be forgotten. 

 The one only and sovereign remedy for them is the very 



55 



