June 10, 1886. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
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COMING EVENTS 
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Royal Society at 4. SO p M. 
Manchester Horticultural Exhibition (seven days). 
WniT Sunday. 
Bank Holiday. 
Royal Meteorological Society at 7 p.m. 
WEEDS AND WASTE. 
EDS are exhausters of the soil robbers. They 
rob the land of its virtues, steal the food of 
useful crops, destroy the credit of cultivators, 
and empty the pockets of the owners of land. 
Weeds have done more injury to British hus¬ 
bandmen than all the importations of foreign 
grain has, for if there had been none of these 
robbers the increase of home grown food would 
have been enormous, with no more cost for 
seed, manure, or rent, and only a little more for labour if 
timely applied. The condition is important to gardeners and 
farmers alike, for “timely action ” is undoubtedly the great 
lever of economy in cleansing the land and conserving its 
virtues for profitable or desirable crops. 
That familiar implement, the hoe, is a great factor in 
successful culture, and its prompt and frequent use is a 
certain incentive to the growth of plants. It is the great 
annihilator of weeds which, if allowed to develope, gorge on 
the virtues of the land and leave it the poorer. It were as 
hopeless to expect weed-infested ground to maintain its 
supporting power as to rely on a full crop of hay from fields 
constantly grazed with cattle or sheep. The only difference 
is that the animals deprive the land of its resources above, 
the weeds extracting them from below the surface. The 
effects are the same, only the former evil is more apparent, 
though the latter is not less real. 
Of what avails draining, digging, trenching, ploughing, 
and manuring if whatever may be intended to cultivate does 
not derive the benefit of these operations ? They are quite 
costly enough when the accruing advantages are immediately 
directed to the object desired ; but when weeds are allowed 
to have a great share of the proceeds, just to that extent is 
the money expended in preparing and enriching the soil 
wasted. Weeds and waste go together in the management 
of land under cultivation, and no excuse that can be urged in 
extenuation, and no argument that may be advanced, can alter 
that fact. Everything that grows needs food, and the very 
existence of growth is visible evidence of the appropriation of 
the virtues of the soil—of food being extracted from it. 
When this is represented in useful crops or plants that it is 
sought to perfect, in those the cultivator has his reward ; if 
represented in weeds, in those he incurs the penalty of 
neglect, waste and loss. There is no mistake about this. 
The loss in some individual cases may be small and com¬ 
paratively inappreciable, but in others it may be both seen 
and felt, while in the aggregate it is enormous. 
Judging by the complacent way in which weeds are 
tolerated among garden and farm crops it might be supposed 
that they live on a different kind of food, one crop not 
depriving the other of the means of support. It should be 
known that they live on exactly the same kind of food, 
though the relative proportions of the ingredients may vary, 
as in the case of cultivated plants. Weeds and the crops 
they accompany abstract the same food from the common 
store. They are competitors, each leaving something less 
No. 311.—VOL. XII., Third Series, 
for the other ; and weeds, if permitted to develope, will cer¬ 
tainly have their share. 
As an illustration of the competing power of weeds and 
cultivated plants we may adduce two familiar examples— 
namely, one of the commonest of all crops, Wheat, and one 
of the most ubiquitous of weeds, Groundsel. What do we 
find ? This : Leaving out what may be termed minor ingre¬ 
dients in both cases, we find the prominent constituents of 
both as ascertained by analyses are phosphoric acid, lime, 
potash, and magnesia. Of these, taking the mean analyses 
of grain and straw, Wheat contains of phosphoric acid 18-3, 
lime 4-65, potash 18-3, magnesia 7-92. Now to Groundsel. 
This contains of phosphoric acid 7-65, lime 16-11, potash 
29-85, magnesia 6-29. It will be seen that both partake of 
the same ingredients though in differing proportions, yet 
both are equally exhausting. Groundsel is a potash plant; 
so is the Potato, and when both are grown together, as is 
often the case, the useful crop is deprived of a large amount 
of the chief agent in its development. Potash is thus 
essential for Potatoes and Groundsel, and when it is applied 
to land for those crops both are benefited. These instances 
show that the food of useless weeds and useful crops are 
similar, therefore weeds very decidedly represent waste. It 
is a marvel that they are permitted to flourish as they do 
among cultivated crops in gardens and fields. 
Some time ago I wrote to a farmer who grows the best 
crops of Potatoes, followed by the best crops of Wheat, of 
any that come under my observation (which is not very 
limited), on a matter not foreign to the subject of these notes. 
He grows side by side—that is, in breadths in the same 
field—early Potatoes, such as Beauty of Hebron, which pro¬ 
duces short tops that die down in July; Regents, that grow 
say six weeks longer and about three times stronger; 
Magnum Bonums, that grow very much stronger still, and 
do not ripen till very late in the autumn. Probably the 
majority of persons would imagine that the strong and late- 
growing varieties would exhaust the land much more than the 
dwarf earlies, and consequently there would be a marked 
difference in the Wheat crop in the respective plots. This 
was the view of a few gardeners to whom I spoke on the 
subject, but as I inclined to a different view information was 
sought to settle the point. The following is the answer 
obligingly sent, the writer of it not knowing the object of the 
inquiry :— 
“ In reply to your query about the effect of different kinds 
of Potatoes on the following corn crop, I think there is very 
little difference. I have often looked for one but could never 
find anything striking, and I think if I lean to an opinion 
either way it is in favour of the stronger-growing kinds, and 
I fancy the reason is that their tops have smothered the 
weeds and rubbish more effectually. There is an impression 
abroad that if a crop is a failure (such as a thin crop of 
Wheat owing to loss of plant from wireworm) there is more 
nutriment left in the land for the next crop. This is a great 
fallacy. I believe a full heavy crop of anything will exhaust 
the soil no more than a bad crop of the same description.” 
That is a very significant letter. When a crop is thin it 
is not considered to be worth cleaning. The weeds have 
then a merry time growing, flowering, seeding, and exhaust¬ 
ing the land. This they do just as much as a “full and 
heavy ” food crop would. The weeds eat out the virtues of 
the soil and give nothing in return. Millions of pounds 
worth of labour and manure have been wasted on weeds in 
this country during the last fifteen years. 
What is the remedy ? The hoe or other scarifying imple¬ 
ment timely applied—that is, not after the weeds grow, but 
before. Ten thousand can be prevented with a ten times less 
expenditure for time and labour than as many hundreds can 
be destroyed after they have been allowed to get firmly estab¬ 
lished, while in the former case the fertility of the soil has 
been conserved, and in the latter dissipated. 
A man can run a hoe through an acre of ground with less 
No. 1907.—Yol. LXXIV., Old Series 
