After hot weather sets in many are naturally inclined to relax their
garden labors; they have eaten their salads, their radishes and peas;
their beans and corn require but little attention, and as for the
rest, it is left to the company of weeds.
WEEDS.—If the garden be thoroughly hoed twice or three times, the
labor of keeping down weeds the rest of the summer will be small. It
is best to go over a compartment first with the hoe, to cut off weeds
and loosen the soil, then with a rake go over it again, levelling and
smoothing the surface, and collecting the weeds into heaps, which
should be wheeled to the manure-corner and left to decay. In raking,
tread backward so that your tracks will be covered by the rake, and
the bed left even.
Among the most vexatious weeds may be mentioned the purslain
(_Portulacca oleracea_), commonly called pussly. It comes in May and
lasts through the summer. One plant bears seed enough for a whole
acre. It is very tenacious of life. The least bit of root sprouts
again, and when rooted up, if a single fibre touches the soil, it
starts off in full vigor. When boiled it furnishes a very palatable
article of “greens.” We go over the ground with a hoe, then rake it
into heaps and wheel it to the barn-yard. Hogs are fond of it, and it
is said to fatten them well. It is somewhat amusing to those who are
vexed at its insuperable intrusiveness and its inevitable vigor, to
hear English garden-books speaking of it as “somewhat tender,” of
raising it on hot-beds, of drilling it in the open garden, of watering
it in dry weather thrice a week, and cutting it carefully so that it
may sprout again! Cut it as you please, gentlemen! rake it into
alleys, let an August sun scorch it, and if there is so much as a
handful of dirt thrown _at it_, no fear but that it will sprout again.
It is a vegetable type of immortality. The Jamestown weed (called
jimpsum), the Spanish needle, lamb’s-quarters, etc., are easily
eradicated for the season by one or two hoeings. The grasses which
infest gardens, spreading into a cultivated ground from the
grass-plat, or brought in with manure, are easily weeded out if
plucked while small; but if left, the long spreading-roots tear up
tender plants along with them.
It is said that if no seeds were brought into the land by wind or
manure, or growth, the stock of weeds might be eradicated in eight
years. But so long as corners and fence edges are reserved as
weed-nurseries, to furnish an annual supply of seed, no one need fear
that gardening will become too easy from want of work.
We know of but two reasons for letting weeds grow to any size. In a
large garden, when all the ground is not to be planted at once, the
reserved portions may be suffered to sprout all the weeds, and when
six or eight inches high, if turned under, they will furnish good
manure. Again, when cut-worms are very numerous, when tomatoes and
cabbages have been set out on a clean compartment, we have lost from a
half to two-thirds of the plants. If the weeds are kept down just
about the hill, and permitted to grow for a few weeks, between the
rows, although it has a very slovenly look, it will save the cabbages,
etc., by giving ample foot to the cut-worm. When the plants grow tough
in the stem the weeds may be lightly spaded in, and the surface
levelled with a rake.