To separate the valuable fibers of (flax, for example) from the woody parts by beating, combing, or scraping.
n.
An implement or machine used for scutching.
[Obsolete French escoucher, from Anglo-Norman escucher, from Vulgar Latin *excuticāre, frequentative of Latin excutere, to shake out : ex-, ex- + quatere, to shake; see kwēt- in Indo-European roots.]
2. Also, scutch′er. a device for scutching flax fiber.
[1680–90; < Middle French *escoucher (French écoucher) < Vulgar Latin *excuticāre, for Latin excutere (ex-ex-1 + -cutere, comb. form of quatere to shatter]
I'd also avoid putting in perennial weeds with fleshy roots such as bindweed and scutch grass as only a bit of the root has to survive for the plant to keep growing.
The wild anemones in the woods in April, the last load at night of hay being drawn down a lane as the twilight comes on, when you can scarcely distinguish the figures of the horses as they take it home to the farm, and above all, most subtle, most penetrating and most moving, the smell of wood smoke coming up in an autumn evening, or the smell of the scutch fires: that wood smoke that our ancestors, tens of thousands of years ago, must have caught on the air when they were coming home with the result of the day's forage, when they were still nomads, and when they were still roaming the forests and the plains of the continent of Europe.