16. By piercing potatoes, carrots, etc., quack-grass, June grass,
Bermuda grass are sometimes carried to other fields or farms where the
tubers and roots are planted.
17. A farmer buys clover seeds or grass seeds that were grown in some
state that never before grew seeds that went onto his farm and thus he
may get some new weeds. Seeds of alfalfa or some other crop bring new
kinds of weeds, especially those of dodder. As every kind of weed goes
onto a farm to stay there it follows that as a country becomes older the
greater the number of kinds of weeds. As a rule each farm is annually
getting more sorts of weeds, and as each farmer is cultivating weeds,
they are more freely distributed in every field and along every roadside
and by exchanging they are carried to neighboring and distant farms.
A great many farmers buy and sow whatever the merchant offers them under
the name mentioned. For example, the college has a sample of something
called clover seed, sold by a dealer in this state. It contains about 40
per cent of narrow-leaved plantain.
WHERE CERTAIN WEEDS ARE TROUBLESOME.
To begin with, years and years ago no new farm in the wilderness of
Michigan contained more than twenty to thirty-five kinds of weeds, as
there were not more than thirty-five sorts in the entire state, while at
present there are not far from 250 kinds. A large majority of weeds hail
from older countries, more especially from Europe.
There are a few weeds, like Canada thistle and quack-grass, that may
infest any crop of farm or garden, but in most cases, whether to call a
weed very bad depends on the nature of the crop grown, the size of the
weed-seeds and their time of ripening.
Some weeds have a very wide distribution, thriving all around the world
in temperate climates, while others are more limited in range; some
thrive only in dry, thin, sandy soil and others in wet soils. To some
extent the presence of a few weed-seeds is almost as objectionable when
once on the farm, as though there were more, because these few may
thrive and seed freely.
In many respects the lists of weeds for New Jersey is different from the
list in Michigan, while half the weeds of Nevada or Oregon are not known
in our state.
Chess, cockle, red root and rye are liable to be troublesome in fields
of winter wheat, because the seeds are more or less difficult to
separate from this grain and for the reason that they require a portion
of two years to come to maturity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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