FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 89 



CLOVER STILL IN THE LEAD. 



As corn is a giant grass, the king of grasses, so clover is the king of 

 legumes for the Michigan farmer. It is thoroughly acclimated and has 

 demonstrated its right to be considered a prime necessity on every well- 

 organized stock farm. Twenty pounds of clover hay with eight to ten 

 pounds of corn meal is an almost perfect ration for a dairy cow. Early 

 cut clover hay is well nigh indispensable for calves, and I know of no ra- 

 tion for fattening lambs superior to clover hay and shelled corn with or 

 without silage. If care" is taken to protect the young plant clover is a 

 sure crop. If the seed be sown without a nurse crop in early spring- 

 on fall-prepared ground using a. mixture of four parts of medium red 

 clover to one part alsike and sowing eight to ten pounds of seed per 

 acre, there is little risk to run and seldom disappointment. Our ex- 

 periments this year show that the farmer should insist on seed grown 

 either in Michigan or some adjacent state. Foreign seed whether grown in 

 northern or southern European countries does not do as well as Amer- 

 ican seed. The inferiority is very pronounced and is sufficient to banish 

 foreign clover seed from our markets. 



Upon former occasions I have reported the value of the roots of clover 

 as a fertilizer. I need but refer to our bulletin 149 and the report of 

 the Secretary of the State Board of Agriculture for 1898 for these rec- 

 ords. Our experiments also go far to show that none of the newer le- 

 gumes can be considered dangerous rivals of clover in the estimation 

 of stock feeders. 



ALFALFA. 



A canvass of the State, necessarily very incomplete, shows that the area 

 sown to alfalfa is slowly growing in Michigan. A field here and another 

 there has produced good crops for more than one year, demonstrating 

 the wisdom of more wide-spread trials of this new legume by the fram- 

 ers themselves. The station cannot do this work for you, you must do 

 it yourself. 



It has been found advisable to sow plenty of seed per acre^ certainly 

 twenty pounds, better twenty-five pounds, getting American grown seed 

 and carefully examining it for weed seeds, and testing vitality and ger- 

 mination. The seed must not be sown on land where the water table 

 is near the surface, nor upon thin soil with hard clay sub-soil. By hav- 

 ing the soil free from June grass, sowing thick, and clipping off the 

 weeds a couple of times during the first year, farmers are succeeding 

 in getting meadows that yield annually from five to seven tons of most 

 valuable hay per acre. I have in mind in southeastern Michigan an eight- 

 een acre field of alfalfa, two years old, producing abundant crops. Other 

 fields farther north are doing good work. I hope that many farmers 

 will try acre or two-acre pieces of alfalfa this year, learning how to grow 

 it and extending the size of their crops as experience suggests. 



Our field of sand lucerne is still doing business at the old stand; 



the crops during the past season were per acre : June 4th, 4,318 pounds 



per acre of dry hay; July 24, 4,706 pounds per acre of dry hay; August 



5th, 3,000 pounds per acre of dry hay ; Total. 12,034 pounds per acre of 



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