Thurlow Weed

“ It was the wrecked weed that concerned him most, rock-weed, kelp, and sea-weed, as he named them, which he carted to his barn-yard; and those bodies were to him but other weeds which the tide cast up, but which were of no use to him. ”

“ As regards any particular weed, the cultivator should learn all he can respecting its duration, seeding capacity, method of dissemination, the depth and spread of its root-system, and any other particulars which enable him to judge when and how to attack it. It is only necessary to see the victory of such drought-resisting weeds as Hieracium pilosella, Plantains, Hypochaeris, on lawns to realise how weeds may win in the struggle for existence with the finer grasses. ”

“ Paradoxical as it may seem, the weed is the best friend the farmer has because it compels him to cultivate his land in order to exterminate the intruder. Cultivation keeps the soil open to air and moisture and conserves the latter. It is best, therefore, to go over lightly with a hoe the day after a heavy rain or a good watering.
The time to weed is before you see the weeds, but if they do appear, don't run away from them. When none are in sight, the chances are that upon microscopic examination, a velvety fuzz of green would be discovered. ”

“ As a rule the annual weeds are kept under with comparative ease, it usually being the perennials with spreading roots which give the real trouble. In preparing a piece of ground, every piece of such root—be it of couch grass, bindweed, or what not—should be picked out and burnt. Then, if, through several seasons, every shoot of perennial weed be pulled off directly it is seen, they will eventually be subdued or even vanquished. ”

“ The seeds of naturalized plants seem, in many cases, to have floated across our lake upon the water; for we have found the European mint and catnip growing with the blue gentian immediately on the banks where the woods spread around in every direction for some distance.
The word weed varies much with circumstances; at times, we even apply it to the beautiful flower or the useful herb. A plant may be a weed, because it is noxious, or fetid, or unsightly, or troublesome, but it is rare indeed that all these faults are united in one individual of the vegetable race. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fire-weed, a species of tall thistle of rank and unpleasant scent, is the first plant that appears when the ground has been freed from timbers by fire: if a piece of land lies untilled the first summer after its being chopped, the following spring shows you a smothering crop of this vile weed. The next plant you notice is the sumach, with its downy stalks, and head of deep crimson velvety flowers, forming an upright obtuse bunch at the extremity of the branches: the leaves turn scarlet towards the latter end of the summer. ”

“ I have a large heart in regard to things that grow, and many a weed that would not be tolerated anywhere else is allowed to live and multiply undisturbed in my garden. They are such pretty things, some of them, such charmingly audacious things, and it is so particularly nice of them to do all their growing, and flowering, and seed-bearing without any help or any encouragement. I admit I feel vexed if they are so officious as to push up among my tea roses and pansies, and I also prefer my paths without them ”

“ An amazing amount of fiction and nonsense has been written about the sargasso weed, but the truth is actually more unbelievable. Though we see it in such immense patches, and although for days the ocean may be flecked with the scattered heads of the weed, yet it is no more at home in mid-ocean than the falling leaves in autumn may claim as their place of abode, the breeze which whirls them about, or the moss upon which at last they come to rest. ”

“ The more attractive and pretty of the British weeds—as the common daisy, of which the poets have made so much, the larkspur, which is a pretty cornfield weed, and the scarlet field-poppy, which flowers all summer, and is so taking amid the ripening grain—have not immigrated to our shores. Like a certain sweet rusticity and charm of European rural life, they do not thrive readily under our skies. Our fleabane has become a common roadside weed in England, and a few other of our native less known plants have gained a foothold in the Old World. ”

“ Take care, meanwhile, that there be as little as possible on the stone, beside the weed itself. Especially scrape off any small sponges, and see that no worms have made their twining tubes of sand among the weed-stems; if they have, drag them out; for they will surely die, and as surely spoil all by sulphuretted hydrogen, blackness, and evil smells.
Put your weeds into your tank, and settle them at the bottom ”

“ Fortunately, it matures later than the timothy, and so does not get its seeds transferred; but it is almost disgusting to see the skins and noses of the horses and cattle turned into the field when the hay is off, coated with a glutinous, viscid gum, to which every speck of dust, every flying seed of weeds, sticks all too tightly. Plowing up the field, and summer fallowing, are the only remedies when the tar-weed gets too bad to endure. Tar-weed is an annual which grows some eight or ten inches high, one stalk from each seed ”

“ Now if one thinks for a little over the cunning and ingenuity of these proceedings, it is obvious that each single weed has somehow learnt how to develop exactly at the right time. Those especially which are intended (by themselves) to form part of the seed mixtures must flower exactly at the same time as the corn. As a matter of fact, most seed mixtures are often full of weeds. In a single pound of clover seed, no less than 14,400 foreign seeds, including those of forty-four different weeds, have been discovered. ”

“ I do not know whether the practice of putting indigo-weed about horses’ tackling to keep off flies is well founded, but I hope it is, for I have been pleased to notice that wherever I have occasion to tie a horse I am sure to find indigo-weed not far off, and therefore this, which is so universally dispersed, would be the fittest weed for this purpose. ”

“ Our native weeds, on the other hand, are furtive and retiring; they flee before the plow and the scythe, and hide in corners and remote waste places. Will they, too, in time, change their habits in this respect?
"Idle weeds are fast in growth," says Shakespeare, but that depends upon whether the competition is sharp and close. If the weed finds itself distanced, or pitted against great odds, it grows more slowly and is of diminished stature, but let it once get the upper hand and what strides it makes! ”

“ The Australian native as a rule cultivates nothing. Yet I fancy that man’s share in weed dispersal is as often as not merely restricted to producing the conditions favourable to the growth of weeds, and that the seeds are often brought by birds and other agencies. Many weeds of the genera Atriplex, Polygonum, and Ranunculus are dispersed by partridges in England, and I have often found the uninjured fruits of the plants in the stomachs of these birds. ”

“ Every individual attends to his or her own washing—if the husband wants a clean shirt, he washes it himself.
Before the introduction of the potato through early white fur-traders, the only plant cultivated by the Alaskan savages was a potent weed which they grew as a substitute for tobacco—the importation of the latter, however, has taken its place entirely to-day, because the Virginian weed is far more pleasant. But the old stone mortars and pestles that are still to be found knocking around the most venerable town-sites, bear evidence to the industry of making native tobacco here ages ago. ”

“ This we have attempted in England too, even in the place where I live, but the obstinate and unmerciful weed did so confound them, that it was impossible to keep them clean with any ordinary industry, and so they were given over: It seems either weeds grow not so fast in other countries, or that the people (which I rather think) are more patient and laborious. ”

“ A weed that grew up between the cobbles, crouching under the hoofs of horses and the tramp of men, and who was pulled up and thrown aside and still lived on and flourished in various ways, and all with that tenacity of purpose and buoyancy of spirit which distinguishes all weeds and which never by any possibility marks a better quality of plant, vegetable or animal. ”

“ I may end up in some worse place
But I’m going to make the test.”
“And I’m the soul of solid content,”
Said the pumpkin to the weed.
“Rather than take any chance at all
I’ll stay here and go to seed.”
But I’d rather be a traveling weed
Than a stationary squash.
“I know,” Hinman said. “You’re a pure-bred tumbleweed and no mistake. But most folks follow one business, and let the rest alone.”
“And it’s my observation that most folks are dissatisfied with what they’re working at but keep on doing it the rest of their natural lives just to try and vindicate their judgment,” Carver said. ”

“ Thistles can be discouraged by cultivation, and we are so used to them that we know how to go about the job, but the new things that are coming into the country with every batch of mill feed or seed grain are usually mysteries as to their habits until they have been firmly established. Having secured a copy of the government weed-book, the nature-student has been hunting for the plants described, and between the railroad right of way and the neighbouring fields has found almost every noxious weed described. ”

“ A few, not content with the compound already described, absolutely mix tobacco, previously reduced to a coarse powder, by rubbing the dried leaves with the thumb in the hollow of the other hand! One would think that ‘potent weed’ must supersede all its companions, and cause them to be as little tasted, as though they had not been crowded into the jumble of flavors. ”

“ We can also say of tropical weeds that many of them are distributed by birds. In the crop of a dove in Hawaii I found a number of the small dry fruits of Waltheria americana, the widely spread tropical weed before mentioned, and of another weed of the order Compositæ. On the bare rocky peak of one of the Vanua Levu mountains the only plants found growing were Oxalis corniculata 417and a species of Peperomia, both of them evidently growing from seed dropped by birds. ”

“ Every weed in the meadows, every creeper in the woodland, is battling for its own hand each day and all day long against a crushing competition. It is battling for food and drink, for air and sunlight, for a place to stand in, for a right to existence. Its rivals around are striving hard with their roots to deprive it of its fair share of water and of manure; are striving hard with their leaves to forestall it in access to carbonic acid and sunshine ”

“ The weed to which I refer is one of those curious plants, which, from their peculiar structure, are unable to draw their nourishment directly from the earth, but are obliged to feed themselves by sucking the juices of other plants, and thus destroying them, or weakening them so greatly as to prevent their producing a crop that will repay the cultivator for his labour and expense. ”

“ Persistently and constantly weed them out and cultivate the soil. Clean cultivation is the only sort for good crops and freedom from weeds.
"Weeds, as flowers, drop in the three classes of annuals, biennials and perennials. Any annual is easy enough to hold down. Just pull such weeds up. Some merely cut the weed off at the surface of the ground, but it is a better way to be rid of the thing entirely. And should you not be quite sure of the kind of weed, then pulling up is the only really safe plan. ”

“ To destroy Weeds.—In this climate if a plow is not kept lively in the early part of the season, weeds will completely take the crop. The soil is like a table full of food. Every man who sits down to it makes it less. Every weed eats up a part of the soil, and takes away, needlessly, so much from the corn. But it is not merely the nutritive ingredients which are extracted—but what, on some soils, in some seasons, is even worse—weeds drink up the moisture. There are many soils which could afford to lose much mineral and vegetable substance without lessening the supply for corn ”

“ A plant like the pigweed, which lives only one year, is called an annual and is one of the easiest weeds to destroy. [Pg 70] Mustard, plantain, chess, dodder, cockle, crab grass, and Jimson weed are a few of our most disagreeable annual weeds.
The best time to kill any weed is when it is very small; therefore the ground in early spring should be constantly stirred in order to kill the young weeds before they grow to be strong and hardy. ”

“ That clover crops are often very full of weeds every farmer must be fully aware, but few among them have used sufficient penetration to have discovered the source of most of the weed growth, not only in clovers, but in other crops: how much, then, may they be expected to be astonished if told that they cultivate weeds by sowing their seeds as carefully as they do those of their crops, and that they pay the same price for weed as for crop seeds! ”