WHA T IS A WEED ? 5 



8. Call in the aid of grazing animals, particularly sheep. Turn- 

 ing them into mutton and wool is a very profitable way of fighting 

 weeds. In stubbles where a young and succulent growth of such 

 plants usually springs up after harvest, and in old pastures where the 

 more dainty neat cattle have selected the plants that they liked best 

 and left the weeds to seed, sheep may be turned in and by their close 

 cropping so shear down the leaf-growth as to cause many very 

 undesirable plants to be root-smothered to death. 



9. Practice rotation of crops. Continued growing of one crop 

 not only exhausts the soil but serves to thoroughly infest it with 

 the weeds that most commonly grow with that crop. Different 

 plants take food from the soil in different amounts and proportions, 

 and a proper rotation must be decided by conditions of soil and 

 climate. It should be a systematic alternation on each field of the 

 three general classes of field crops : grain crops, cultivated crops, 

 and grass crops, including the clovers. The farmer whose scheme 

 of rotation is mainly intent on the improvement of the land and 

 not on his immediate profit, will, in the end, make the most money 

 and have the least difficulty in suppressing the weeds. Any rota- 

 tion should put much stress upon a cleansing crop, requiring such 

 close care in cultivation as to allow no opportunity for weeds to 

 grow. This has fully as important a place in the series as the crops 

 grown solely for their money value, or as the manurial or feeding 

 crop which is intended to return some of the lost fertility to the soil. 



10. More wide-reaching and uniform laws, dealing with the con- 

 trol and eradication of weed plagues, should be in force. Many 

 weeds are in the noxious class because they are so well equipped 

 with the means of spreading their kind over large sections of the 

 country. This quality increases the difficulty and expense of their 

 extermination, and it should interest the entire community as well 

 as the individual. If there are weed-laws already on the statute 

 books, they should be made effective. If there are none, then 

 persistent agitation for the enactment of such laws should be carried 

 on by the persons who are most interested and who would be most 

 benefited by their enforcement ; namely, the farmers of the com- 

 munity. 



