THE BENEFITS OF TILLAGE 101 



TILLAGE TO KILL WEEDS 



The second object of tilling that of killing 

 weeds is forced upon the attention of the farmer 

 with back-breaking and sweat-rolling regularity. 

 A weed is a plant that is not wanted whether it 

 is a Canada thistle in the pasture, a daisy in the 

 meadow, quack-grass in the corn or "pusley" in 

 the garden. The plant may be innocent enough 

 in itself, and may sometimes even be grown as a 

 crop, as when sand vetch sown this year for hay 

 comes up next year in the corn planted on the same 

 land. A weed is a plant out of place, accord- 

 ing to man's scheme, so he becomes its bitter 

 enemy. 



The Tirade Against Weeds. From the amount 

 of wordy abuse that weeds have to stand 

 from man one would think that they are 

 free moral agents and capable of choosing be- 

 tween the already overcrowded wildwood, where 

 they would have to fight for a living, and the in- 

 viting farm lands where the soil has been made 

 soft and comfortable. If one were to ask a 

 thousand farmers in this country, "What is the 

 greatest trouble you have in farming ? " the com- 

 plaint that would rise most readily to the lips of 

 nine hundred of them would be "I could get along 

 all right if it was not for those pesky weeds." 

 Weed recipes, purporting to be short cuts to the 

 extermination of this torment, are offered by the 

 score. Many bulletins and several books on weeds 

 keep constantly before him the danger of relaxing 

 watchfulness against the great pest. It would al- 

 most seem, from all that is said about and against 

 weeds, that if only those plants that we put into the 

 soil could grow, and no others, the chief impediment 



