Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 April 1879 — Experience in Killing Canada Thistles. [ARTICLE]

Experience in Killing Canada Thistles.

It sometimes happens with many farmers that some particular management of the irrepressible Canada thistle, in some single instances, through hoeing, plowing, mowing or some other method, apparently more accidental than through any shrewd management, w|U prove to be r almost entirely successful in killing these posts of the farm. Let the farmer out take that particular method as a precedent for future battling with the enemy, undertaking to kill other fields of thistles in the same way, and nine times out of ten he will fail and get discouraged; or. even if he succeeds in killing them out, root and teiti cti ,huwili find the identical ground well stocked with seed, with which to renew itself again, unless constant care is exercised to suppress them. 1 do not consider Canada thistles really irrepressible; but 1 must say that 1 have been more successful in keeping them subdued through tilling ana weeding, so that they would not interfere with the growing crop, rather than in killing them outright. 1 am inclined to believe that the Berlin correspondent you quoted in a recent issue will find that the thistles he reported to be killed were only choked down and subdued, for the time being, by the ranker growth of the field-crop overtopping them, when their leaves, which act as their lungs, deprived of sufficient light and air, will shrivel and die down, just as they are reported to have done by your correspondent. I have found that with any crop that will grow ranker or taller than the thistle it is much easier to keep the latter in check than with a short growth, as barley, or a small hoed crop, as beans. Wherever thistles can have the advantage, they are most sure to take it. I will state some personal and varied experience in fighting thistles, which have proved the most successful in subduing them. The first lot I tried to kill was a few acres where the wheat was choked out by them the year before. I planted to corn, in rows, to cultivate both ways, and which I continued to cultivate often until August;, then, after a rain, pulling every remaining thistle by hana, : at ..which time they would come up with a long root, ana by that season of the year tbo corn was large enough to so completely shade tne ground as to keep them from sprouting again. I have never had many thistles on that spot since. The next experience was with a tenacre lot, \tell-seeded to the largo late clover, with about half of it yery •• thistley.” Both the clover and thistles were nearly even in their growth until they were about twenty or twentyfour Inches high and densely thick on the ground, with the thutUSs nearly heading oat- At of affairs, I

think about the ear\y part of July, a heavy wind and rain-storm laid it all flat on the ground. In a few days the clover ralsod its heads, to grow «p again as rank as ever; bnt the thistles, failing to make a new grqwtk, died out and rotted under the heavy crop of clover, which was cnt the last of July. The thistles seemed quite, dead, and that picoe of ground wab free of the noxious weeds tor years after. Other fields where thistles had overpowered the' barley I have sowed to rye, which grew quicker and taller than the thistles, reducing them very much, and giving a good opportunity to seed down to olover ana timothy, which, when the ground is well-stocked with it, So preoccupies the land as to check the growth of the thistles. I was, however, surprised one year in tilling twelve acies of corn on an old and tough quack turf, where I expected also to have plenty of thistles, by not finding any of the latter, except whero some stacks fjji standing had smoothered out the quack, when the thistles soon occupied that ground. Over the balance of the field it appeared as if the quack had run out the thistles. Late in August, as I had the quack about subdued, the thistles started up quite numerously from seed which seemed to have been in the ground. However, I think these small plants could be easily killed if attended to promptly.—if. Ives, in “ American Cultivator