Swine Growers' Session. 87 



which I have lived here I have spent more time, money and work 

 on this than any other one proposition. I have corresponded with 

 the best authorities of both this country and Europe on the subject, 

 and after so long a time have finally succeeded. 



ALFALFA. 



(Geo. W. Williams, Humansville, Mo.) 



In giving a short paper on Alfalfa, the most wonderful forage 

 plant of all plants, I shall give my own experience and observation 

 here in south and southwest Missouri, for there is not a rule or 

 plan in regard to its culture that will hold good everywhere. 



I find many failures here can be attributed to the grower try- 

 ing to follow the advice of some one whose environment is entirely 

 different from what it is here. Alfalfa, like many other plants, 

 will adapt itself to its surroundings after a few years growing 

 under certain conditions. 



There are many mistaken ideas prevailing among farmers that 

 have caused many failures and many more not to try to grow it. 

 If there had been one-third less written and said about how to grow 

 it, there would be three times as many growing it in Missouri as 

 are growing it today. Some man in western Kansas or Nebraska 

 tells all about the kind of soil it grows on and when and how to 

 sow it for a success. The Missouri farmer knows his soil is differ- 

 ent and will not try it, or he does not know that it is different and 

 does try it, and a failure is the result. It would have been much 

 better if that Kansas or Nebraska man had put in his time telling 

 its feeding value, and not in getting our Missouri farmers enthused 

 over it as a feed. Then they would at once set about trying to find 

 out how to grow it, not in Kansas or Nebraska, where it is grown 

 ander irrigation, but here in Missouri, where we depend on the 

 rainfall and usually have a little too much for best results. I have 

 been growing it for fourteen (14) years, ?,nd the best crop I have 

 ever raised or ever expect to get again unless we have another sea- 

 son like it, it was the dry year of 1901. That year I fully disproved 

 the idea that alfalfa sent its roots deep in the earth searching for 

 water. I found in the fall of 1901 and the following spring, that 

 the roots of plants from seed sown in the fall of 1900 and passed 

 through the extreme dry season, when all surface moisture had 

 evaporated, were no deeper in the ground than plants of the same 



