84 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
tion. The important thing to remember is that the 
vanilla requires partial, but not too heavy shade, 
especially in its early stages of growth, and freedom from 
injury by strong breezes. 
Weeding , — Macfarlane is strongly opposed to a 
clean-weeded plantation. He prefers to have his planta- 
tion covered with weeds of different sorts. These, he 
says, act as a mulch for the surface-feeding roots, a very 
good thing in a dry spell. The deep-rooting varieties 
of weeds are constantly bringing up nourishment from 
the deeper layers of the soil, which the roots of the 
vanilla do not reach. The mulch consisting of decayed 
leaves and other parts of the weeds is eventually 
converted into plant food, in the form of humus, the 
constituents of which can be assimilated by the vanilla. 
There is, indeed, a great deal to be said in favour of 
leaving the ground covered with a carpet of herbaceous 
weeds, instead of spending time and money in eradicat- 
ing every blade of grass seen on the estate. All planters 
admit that weeding forms a large item in the expense 
of maintaining an estate, and where it is useless and 
perhaps injurious the principle of clean weeding should 
be abandoned. 
Of course, if there are climbers among the weeds 
which will strangle the young plants, or strong growing 
herbs or shrubs which shut out the light from the young 
plant, or harbour snails or injurious insects, it will be 
necessary to clear these away, but to spend money in 
scraping out every tuft of grass or little herbs like 
Portulaca seems unnecessary extravagance. 
Vanilla in the wild state does not grow on absolutely 
bare soil. It is a forest plant growing on land covered 
with thick scrub or low bushes, and to expose its roots 
to a blazing sun and to the rush of a tropical rain- 
storm is not treating it in a natural manner. Exposure 
of the ground in the tropical rain-forest region, near the 
equator, has also the objection that the violent rain- 
storms will wash away from bared ground all the humus 
and surface soil in a comparatively short time, leaving 
