How to Get Rid Of Sorrel

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 115, 21 March 1891, Page 3

How to Get Rid Of Sorrel

Sorrel is one of the worst of weeds when it is not rightly managed. To get rid of it, some advise to manure the Jand, to apply lime to kill tbe acid in the soil, to drain the land and so forth, but very few seem to have any certain panacea for this persistent weed. But having vanquished Canada thistles, I was not afraid of sorrel and applied the same treatment to it as was effective with the thistles. Manure only makes it grow more luxuriantly ; it loves manure ; acid in the soil is not the cause of it, and as for lime, I have often seen it growing abuut lime-kilns and at the very foot of heaps of waste lime with the greatest ; freedom. It grows mostly on the j driest land, so that draining is no cure for it. But to turn it under deeply, put the land in corn and use cultivator and hoe to kill the young plants, and then sow the land at the last working of the corn with rye and peavine clover, and the sorrel will be got rid of four or live years, when it will begin to appear again. Then a repetition of the treatment will fiuish it. Sorrel spreads from the roots worse than any other weed ; hence the land should be turned under at least 7in or Bin. It is then smothered and roots die and only the seed is left. A field which is in clover was covered with many patches of sorrel this spring. I mowed the clover early in June when the sorrel began to get red with blossom. The stuff was gathered and bu ned. In July the second growth clover was a beautiful sight, a level ca-pet of brilliant blossoms with the clove f standing over 2ft high, and the mower was put to work, leaving a surface upon which aot a sorrel plant can be seen. But " it is not dead but sleepeth" only, md will probably appear in the spring, when I shall turn the clover inder Bin deep and plant corn and leed down again in the fall. I expect hat will make an end of it. — Corres londent American paper.