758 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



said: "Well, now, you can't just grow it. That is all there is to it. 

 You might just as well shut up. You can't grow it here." They 

 said it wasn't the Datura] place for the plant. But we are growing it, 

 and within a radius of fifteen miles of our home, we produced three 

 thousand tons last year. We fooled with alfalfa for ten years, and 

 wore very much discouraged, and I want to say to you, you find out 

 one thing if you have ever tried it on a piece of ground and did 

 not succeed and plow that up and re-seed it, that you succeeded much 

 better than the first time. That is practically on account of three 

 things, one of which, there is something in inoculation, and there 

 is added some fertility; and further, it has put the ground in better 

 mechanical condition for the following crops. Where we are grow- 

 ing it in Ohio we are doing it on a variety of soils in the glacial drift 

 — I don't know that the glacial drift has any peculiar significance — 

 but we are in the glacial drift, and we thought at first it was best 

 on alluvial soils, and tried it on that soil, and then we thought we 

 could do better on gravelly soils, and we have finally come to grow 

 the best alfalfa on heavy white clay lands, and on yellow clay lands, 

 lands that were formerly considered pretty poor lands. But there is 

 wh;ere it is doing the best to-day since we have got stands of it. 

 You cannot grow alfalfa, to begin with, on a shallow soil, that is a 

 soil where it is only twelve or fifteen inches to the bed rock, in our 

 country, for the reason that it will freeze out in February and March, 

 it will heave out of the ground, but there are not, I suppose, very 

 many soils like that in your State. Mostly you would have a depth 

 of from three to eight feet. We grow it on even pea soils there at 

 home with the addition of some muriate potash. My brother told 

 me that the keystone of the situation in Pennsylvania is lime. I do 

 not know 4:kat it is, but if 3011 put lime on I wouldn't fool with it, I 

 would put enough on. It is not very expensive, and put on about 300 

 pounds to the acre, and put it on in almost any form. 



Now, then, to come right down to alfalfa. To grow alfalfa in any 

 state, there are two or three things that are necessary, and one is 

 a dry soil. To grow alfalfa successfully on my farm we had to put 

 in 320 acres about 14 miles in tile drain. That is a synonymous 

 term for sweet soil, and it is not sweet everywhere. You must have 

 a sweet soil, and the lime will make it sweet if it is acid. Last, but 

 not least, you must have some humus in that soil, and preferably 

 some manure on the lard. Now, I do not mean by that you must 

 always have a rich soil. We have alfalfa growing finely on land 

 that was just a white pipe stem clay, but we stimulated it. First 

 we coated with manure, we stimulated the plant until the roots 

 get down to the subsoil. 



A Member: How long do they stay on that soil? 



MR. WING: Twelve years. That is, possibly getting better up 

 until about the eighth year. 



Now, then, about our process of seeding. We plow the ground 

 early in the spring, or late in the winter if we can, and plow it a 

 little deep so it will turn up some fresh dirt. Then early in the spring 

 as we can work the land we go in there and seed the ground nicely 

 with seed, about 15 pounds of alfalfa seed and about a bushel of 

 beardless spring barley. That is what it is useful for, to give a 

 stand of alfalfa, and it is the best nurse crop. 



