WEEDING. 35 



very uncertain, and the land may become too wet to be 

 worked soon after the young plants appear, and yet not too 

 wet to hinder a rapid growth of weeds. Sowing a few radish 

 with the onion seed is sometimes practised. As the radish- 

 seed vegetates in a few days, the rows are thereby marked 

 out, and the wheel-hoe can be used earlier. Care need be 

 taken that the radish-seed are not larger than the onion, and 

 so clog the hole. To obtain very choice cabbage-plants, 

 which grow fine and stocky, farmers sometimes drop a few 

 seeds into the hopper with the onion-seed. On so rich a 

 seed-bed, prompt action is very necessary, or a miserably dis- 

 couraging tangle will soon be the result of negligence. In 

 their comparative freedom from weeds the cultivators in the 

 West, on their new land, have a great advantage over their 

 brethren in the East. By selecting pasture-land, and avoid 

 ing the use of barn-manure, the work of weeding may be 

 greatly reduced. I have raised a crop on such land, when 

 the entire expense from after the crop was planted until it 

 was gathered and got into the barn was but thirty-five dollars 

 to the acre. It was so free of weeds that one man slid 

 through, hand-weeded, and partly thinned, an acre and a 

 quarter inside of a day. Within a day or two after the hoe 

 has passed through the rows, the young plants will need 

 their first weeding with, the fingers. Though when the 

 young onions first appear above the surface, scarcely a weed 

 can be seen, a dear-bought experience has proved to me 

 that a disturbing of the surface at that time close to the 

 plants (it may be done by the fingers, or by some form of 

 weeding implement) destroys the first crop of weeds just 

 as the seed has sprouted, at which stage they are most 

 easily destroyed. This is hand and knee work ; and pur- 

 sued, as it has to be, in this position at intervals throughout 



