The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, August 30, 1917, Page 8

Getting Rid of Quack Grass Some Methods That Are Effective But Costly Outlined for Farmers ETWEEN the seems to want some mysteri=- ous formula for doing a com- monplace piece of work, and the farm critic who thinks all is accomplished if the work is done, no matter how much it may cost, there is a wide field for practical farming and long-headedness to get busy. Every- one is familiar with that sort of advice that tries to appease the appetite for the mysterious. There are complicated rules for making a seed bed, for building fence, for getting rid of various pests. The rule makers evidently take much pleasure in compounding these wond- ers, and there are farmers who seem to hunger for the unique. When the two get together they generally end in talk and the job remains unfinished. The other kind of farmer (more fre- quently an outsider, who is a farm critic) is the one who, with plenty of money and resources of his own, can not understand why the majority of farmers will not lavish their substance upon doing a particular piece of work that most of them try to avoid or only half do. He does not stop to think that the penny may not be worth the candle. He is moved only by a wish to get the thing done in shipshape, and has no patience with those farmers who hold off and try to find an economic method of doing the much neceded work. KILLING QUACK GRASS CAN BEGIN NOW This is true in many lines of endeavor on the farm. It is most common in getting rid of such field pests as quack grass, thistle and mustard, and in making war upon all other nuisances that prey upon farming. The hocus- pocus farmer wants some guaranteed, freakish, complicated cure—the bank- er-farmer advocates lavish expendi- ture of money, time or labor. This two-sided attitude towards some of the worst evils of the Northwestern farm- ers’ grain fields, no doubt has been re- sponsible for no greater progress being made in getting rid of them. Mustard killing time is past for this year, and the best time for eradicating thistle is now well over except in those wholly captured spots where the pest has driven out the cultivated crop. But there is plenty of time to make war on the quack grass and do it in a way that has been proven fully suffi- cient. To be sure that is not the hocus- pocus methods that one once in a while hears mentioned, and the farmer who goes after it must first count the cost. It takes labor and time and it will cost money, and will yield no next year crop. But it will do the business, and it may pay even the cautious farmer to have it over now and wipe the slate clean for his 1919 crop. On this page is shown the picture of a corn crop growing on land that was once abandoned to quack grass. It is one of the finest crops of corn in the upper Red River valley. It is better corn than some growing near it that was planted on land that had not suf- fered from quack grass. The corn field is clean, only here and there an occa- sional stalk of quack showing in the black, well worked earth. But it cost money and effort. This particular corn is growing on a five-acre tract owned by the consoli-- dated school of Glyndon, Minn. The man whose hat appears among the top- most leaves, is A. C. O'Banion, former agricultural teacher for the consoli- dated school, and now county agricul- tural advisor for Clay county, Minn. It was he who laid out the work on this five-acre tract and supervised most of it. CONSTANT CULTIVATION KILLED THE PLANTS To prove to farmers who scoffed at the idea that quack grass could be eradicated, the fact that it could be wholly put out of business, he mowed this field in the fall of 1915, disked and harrowed it, and left it to lie all winter, Early last year he went onto it with a harrow, and he worked the land both ways continually all summer, going over it two or three times a month and kept the quack roots torn up and con- tinually turned to the sun. It was a bad year for breaking up quack, the heavy rains and. the abundance of cloudy weather, affording the best kind of conditions for the grass to re- cover and take new root. The same process worked 'this summer would have been effective with much less labor for the roots would have died quickly under the hot sun that has farmer who hung over the prairies most of the time. By the time the ground froze last year (the autumn of 1916) this land war fairly well rid of its quack grass, and the bleached joints of the stalks were thick on top of the soil, looking as though someone had scattered chop- ped straw over the field and then tried to work it in with a harrow. But the life had gone out of the joints. Last spring (1917) the land was given a good harrowing again and corn was checked in so that cross-harrow- ing could be practiced for a large part of the summer. Immediately the till- ing cure was begun again. There were some deep running roots of quack that began to send green shoots above the ground, but these were harrowed down, jerked out, and dried in fhe sunshine, The grass got no start and the corn reduced to a friable condition, a hay rake was put on the land, the spring teeth set deep down in the soil, catch- ing the long jointed roots that would have lain there to make trouble for another season. These roots were raked out into windrows, and when the field had been thoroughly covered, the crop of quack roots resembled a field of hay to be shocked. ; The ground was also cross-raked, so that any roots that escaped the teeth and stretched out lengthwise in the first raking, were caught, squarely on the cross raking, and pulled out. These windrows were then broken up into rough shocks with the hay rake, and left in the sun to cure. Fortunately this work was done at one of those spells when there was hot sunshine, and several days sufficed to kill the stems and dry them out enough to burn. If his particular circumstances make this rush work impossible, he may be able to sandwich in enough time with a team every week or 10 days to go over a few acres, as Mr, O’Banion did at the Glyndon consolidated school, One redeeming feature of the quack grass is that the masses of roots left beheaded in the soil to decay, give great richness, while their deep and wide penetration acts much as alfalfa roots, to open up the soil, give it air, help in drainage, and in this way ine creases to a certain extent, the produc- ing power of the land. In the garden, or where there are very small patches, quack grass has been effectually killed by staking tar paper down upon it, letting the paper extend beyond the edges of the infected area, and thus, by shutting off light and air, smothering the plant to death, Corn growing on land belonging to Glyndon, Minn., consolidated school. This tract was completely reclaimed from quack grass largely through the efforts of A. C. O’Banion, agricultural advisor for Clay county, who is shown in the picture. came on splendidly. The sturdiness of this crop, planted about the middle of May, can be easily seen from this pic- ture, which by the way, does not repre- sent the most lusty portion of it. Un- less some unusual accident occurs, this tract of corn where there was nothing but quack grass sod one season ago, will give excellent seed corn and an abundance of fodder. FORGOTTEN CORNERS MAY UNDO WORK One thing should be noted in regard to this enterprise. The quack grass around the edges and in one or two of the corners is not dead. These were the places where cultivation did not reach. Unless they are subdued, they will quickly overrun the entire tract again, but another season of tilled crop here, working well into the corners, and plowing a furrow or two outside the till- ed field, will finish these stragglers, and this piece of land can be put to work upon any sort of rotation plan that the owner might wish, with the assurance that the cultivated crop will win with- out hindranee from quack grass. Land once subdued as this is, can be kept in subjection by distributing the seasons for inter-tilled crops among the grain ' or grass crops so as to break up any encroachments that may occur from stray joints of quack, . ‘A method similar in principle but interestingly different .in detail,, was made successful by a farm owner in Pennington county, Minnesota, Mr. Pritchard of Thief River Falls. Mr. Pritchard had a farm upon which was a solid field of quack grass, so well set that it had produced a toagh sod. Neighbors had no confidence in the method taken to eradicate it, which perhaps stimulated Mr. Pritchard to perservere against the handicap of ex- pense and labor until he succeeded. A-DIFFERENT METHOD SUCCEEDS This land was disked this season and after disking was plowed. A man and team were then put on it, and the field was thoroughly and constantly worked, until the soil was in the condi- tion of a garden. When it had been They were then burned as trash, no vestige of them being left in the bot- tom of the piles to take advantage of moisture and shade and send out new rootlets for a fresh start. After this, the land was planted to corn, and vigorous cultivation was fol- lowed, resulting, Mr. Pritchard says, in one of the finest stands of field corn in the northern part of the state. So much for the method that it is proven will get rid of quack grass. There is no question but that the pest can be eradicated. Does it pay to do this in this way? Cost figures for these two pieces of work were not obtainable, and without knowing the cost it would be hard to figure their full value. ‘While in both these instances, and un- doubtedly in general, the succeeding crop will be enough better, owing to extra tillage, to help make up part of the expense for one season out of crop or the extra work, eradication of the grass remains a net expense of many dollars per acre to the farmer for the season. EXPENSE IS HANDICAP FOR MANY FARMERS There are farmers who can not go to this expense, and wait two seasons for return from the land. They must be paid for what they do as they do it. Even in the Pennington county case, where the eradication of the grass took place in the spring before corn plant- ing time, there was such an amount of labor put onto .the patch, that the corn crop, however good, would perhaps not pay for work. Mr. Pritchard, however, figures that it has paid him, for with reasonable care he can now keep the grass out; but he estimates the value of the enterprise more from its effect on the general farming practice, than from any immediate return he will get from this piece of land. Both these experiments are valuable, valuable because they buck the prob- lem bare handed, and do not rely upon ingenious devices. The tarmgr who has a few acres of quack grass may find it to his advantage to put the ex- cessive amount of time to preliminary cultivation, as did Mr. Pritchard, and get a crop (in all liklihoood an extra heavy one) the same year. PAGE EIGHT But this requires almost double lapping of the paper to make sure that no ex- ploring shoots creep through, it may be destroyed by wind or too much rain, and it required just as long a time as either of the other methods mentioned, namely one season out of crop. To Prevent Hog Cholera When hog cholera breaks out in the neighborhood the following preven=- tive measures can be taken. Keep the hogs indoors, or in isolated enclosures, allow no one but the feeder to come near them and disinfect their quarters, If swill is fed it must be boiled or steamed first. The hogs can be given immunity for four weeks against hog cholera by injecting protective hog cholera serum. If the disease is in the herd at the time of treating, or should appear during the period of immunity, the period of immunity will be cons< siderably lengthened, in some cases for life. . When hog cholera gets into the herd the best thing to do is to inject the hogs at once with serum. The North Dakota State Serum institute, Agricultural college, N. D., is supplying tested serum at a cost of 60 cents per 100 c. c. in bottles containing 120,240 and 500 c. c. This serum can be orders< ed by telegraph and will-be sent C. O. D. by express or parcels post. No serum can be returned. The dose for a 100-pound pig is 40 c. c¢. and more or less as the hog is larger or smaller. WINTER RYE Winter rye can be sown any time now and the sooner the better. Sow- ing the rye in the stubble will likely prove the best way. There has been so little rain that the ground has not been packed much,k and it is too dry for plowing. Rye No. 959 developed by the North Dakota experiment station is a very hardy variety. ‘“Know the grade and value of your wool and price it accordingly,” advises the U. S. department of agriculture in a-circular article on wool. . The only trouble with this advice is that the “pricing” the farmers do doesn’t count. ‘Wool buyers fix the price.