282 Couch " or " Twitch." [July, 



be made to prevent flowering, and great care should be taken 

 to procure grass-seeds and seed-corn free from those belong- 

 ing to these weeds. 



2. Hedgerows must be kept clear of these pests, for from 

 plants growing there seeds are disseminated. Moreover, if 

 the hedgerows contain couch of any kind, it will grow out 

 into the headlands, and the first harrowing spreads pieces 

 of rhizomes or the small "bulbs" of onion couch further into 

 the field, and year by year the weeds extend. 



3. Where the couch has become established, repeated 

 ploughing, grubbing, and harrowing during the summer are 

 the only means of dealing with it. The land should be 

 ploughed at first with a shallow furrow, and as much as 

 possible of the weed collected by harrowing when the soil is 

 in just the right state of dryness to leave the roots and creeping 

 stems of the weeds easily. After gathering together, it should 

 be burnt in heaps and the ashes spread over the land. The 

 passage of a roller over the land greatly assists the harrows 

 and cultivators to shake off the soil from the couch and allow 

 of its collection in unbroken lengths. 



Care should be taken not to grub or harrow in wet weather, 

 especially on the heavier kinds of land, or much mischief will 

 be done. When wet, the clods are cut or roughly broken 

 by implements into irregular lumps rather than pulverised, 

 and the creeping stems are severed into short lengths too small 

 to be effectively gathered by any implement. A similar state 

 of things also arises when the land is too dry. There is a 

 time in the drying of ploughed land when the soil readily 

 falls into a fine, crumbly powder, and leaves the roots and 

 rhizomes of weeds clean, and it pays to examine the soil 

 carefully from this point of view before attempting to drag 

 out weeds from it. 



4. After cleaning in the manner just indicated, the land 

 should be sown with mangolds or other root crops, or with 



, beans, and the horse-hoe with grubbing tines should be kept 

 at work between the rows as long as possible. Rape, vetches, 

 or other similar crops which will grow luxuriantly and smother 

 any weeds may also be grown with advantage. 



5. In some cases isolated patches of couch may be forked or 

 dug out and carried off the land. 



