1916.] WHY GROW ALFALFA? 75 



you sow your field. Give the seed for the little patch double 

 inoculation. You may sow a few square rods in the corner of 

 some pig or cow lot. What you want is a rich well-manured plot 

 in which you may get the bacteria to grow. I need to caution 

 you that sometimes we get soil too rich to develop verile bacteria. 

 You may seed this with a little oats to help keep down the weeds- 

 Mow the oats for hay. Of course you will select some place 

 where you can well spare a few inches of the soil and where the 

 shoveling will not be hard. 



Your main crop should be planted in August. This enables 

 you to kill the weed seed. It enables you to get a crop of oat- 

 hay or oat and Canada pea-hay or a crop of early potatoes. Now, 

 if you have your little patch in which you have been growing the 

 bacteria, and if you seed in August, you have your own soil for 

 inoculation. Do not underestimate the importance of inoculation. 

 After the alfalfa is once well started you will get one to two tons 

 per acre more each season as a result of good, abundant inocula- 

 tion. But that is little more than half of the story. If you have 

 abundant inoculation your alfalfa is to gather for you and store 

 in your soil from $15 to $20 worth of nitrogen each year after the 

 first year. This you are to get back in increased yields of potatoes 

 and corn and in richer protein content of corn and grain for years 

 after the alfalfa is plowed under. 



You should work out a crop rotation by which you can leave 

 your alfalfa down for three or more years. If you leave the 

 alfalfa down for three years, and if you had plenty of bacteria on 

 the roots, you should have land that is at least $30 per acre richer 

 in plant food when you plow it up. 



HARVESTING ALFALFA HAY. 



After having grown a crop which is equal pound for pound 

 to thrashed oats or wheat bran, a man'can very easily lose much of 

 it by improper handling. Men are known to have lost from 800 to 

 1800 pounds of shattered leaves. He may injure his stand of 

 alfalfa very materially by cutting too early or too late. Alfalfa 

 must be cut when the little sprouts at the crown are well started 

 and when a majority are yet not high enough to be cut off by the 

 mowing machine. If mowed too early, they are little delicate, 

 white sprouts that cannot stand the exposure to the bright sun- 

 shine and cannot yet make their own food. For some as yet 



