No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 695 



Corp. About Syracuse, N. Y., it is found that alfalfa does well after 

 the land has been cultivated in peas. Probably the best prepara- 

 tion in practice in Pennsylvania is to manure sod land for corn, then 

 cultivate the land in corn for a year and seed to alfalfa. Experi- 

 ments made at the Cornell Experiment Station under the direction 

 of the speaker showed that on Dunkirk clay loam it was necessary to 

 do three things in order to get a successful growth of alfalfa upon 

 that land: (1) fertilize with stable manure at the rate of from ten 

 to twenty tons per acre, (2) lime from 1000 to 3000 pounds of lime 

 per acre, and (3) inoculate with from 100 to 400 pounds of soil 

 from an o'd alfalfa field, it was found by actual tests that no two 

 of these three were enough. Success was only obtained when all 

 three were done. While not all soil may require all three, I am in 

 the habit of recommending strongly all three as a matter of safety. 



INOCULATION. 



Land may be inoculated by simply sowing alfalfa seed, although 

 this is a slow process. Land is sometimes inoculated by sowing 

 a pound of alfalfa seed with the clover seed. Thus a few plants 

 become scattered over the field and finally inoculate the soil. While 

 pure cultures are sometimes used, the speaker has been in the 

 habit of recommending soil from an old alfalfa field at the rate 

 of one hundred to four hundred pounds to the acre, because actual 

 trials have shown that in at least 90 per cent of the cases this me- 

 thod is effective. 



SEED'. 



A very essential factor in the growing of alfalfa is the sowing of 

 suflScient seed, not less than twenty pounds to the acre should 

 be sown and twenty-five pounds will do no harm. If one is not 

 willing to go to the expense of planting plenty of seed he may just 

 as well not attempt to grow alfalfa. Care should be taken also 

 that the seed should be free from dodder. To determine this a 

 sample of seed may be sent to the U. S. Department of Agriculture 

 at Washington or to the Agricultural Experiment Station at State 

 College. In order to secure a sample of alfalfa seed for determina- 

 tion of the dodder, place the bag of alfalfa seed in your wagon 

 bottom end up. In driving from the station to your farm the tend- 

 ency will be for the small seeds to work down to the bottom which 

 will be the top of the sack, so that when you open it you will be 

 likely to find the dodder, if any exists. 



CORN PRODUCTION 



By PROFESSOR JOHN W. GILMORE. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: This shall be simply a 

 corn talk, not by any means an address, because I think we are 

 interested chiefly in the practical phase of growing corn, and I 

 want to go over some of the points that have a bearing on the 

 production of corn, as well as on the seed quality of corn. I pre- 

 sume that I am quite right when I say that the question of seed 

 corn for the farmere of Pennsylvania will be one of the most im- 

 portant they have to solve during the coming year. As I under- 



