778 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



this reason every permanent pasture when laid down should be well 

 supplied with all the clovers that will thrive there. We would sow both 

 the common red and mammoth and put in a small sprinkling of both 

 alsike and white, although it is scarcely necessary in the older parts of 

 the country to sow white. It will come in of itself. A pound to the acre, 

 however, would not be amiss, and also a pound of alsike. In other words, 

 if we were putting down a permanent pasture we would sow four pounds 

 of blue grass, two pounds of orchard grass, four pounds of mammoth, 

 one pound of white clover, one pound of alsike on dry land and two 

 pounds on wet. 



This may seem to many of our readers heavy seeding. You want a 

 pasture. You can't afford to stint the grass seed either in amount or in 

 variety. Assuming now that you secure a good stand what do you have 

 the next year? First, the early bite in the orchard grass, next in the 

 blue grass, followed by timothy. In the latitude of Des Moines the blue 

 grass will begin to head out from the 25th of April to the 4th of May, 

 according to our observation. Red clover comes next in bloom, and two 

 weeks afterwards mammoth. This carrier you well on to July, and if 

 your common red clover is partially pastured off, the bloom will be 

 deferred well on to the middle of July. Your orchard grass then gets its 

 second wind, and we have seen it grow half an inch a day in the very 

 driest time in August; in fact, it pays little attention to dry weather. 

 In this dry season your white clover does but little, as is also the case with 

 the alsike if it has not been closely pastured. If it has, it will still try to 

 produce a seed crop. During the fall you have timothy and red and 

 mammoth clover; but blue grass literally spreads itself and gives you 

 just what you want in October and the early part of November. 



It is important, however, in handling permanent pasture not to pas- 

 ture too closely and particularly after the blue grass has monopolized the 

 land. Blue grass is a born monopolist, as bad as the Standard Oil or 

 the beef trust. It has to be controlled, which can be done only by sowing 

 every second or third year red and mammoth clover. It is kindness to 

 the bluegrass to do this, just as it would be kindness to trusts to control 

 them. Permanent pasture after blue grass has aken possession is always 

 better for being thoroughly scarified, chastised, prevented from being 

 a monopolist. 



Managed in this way the permanent pasture can be made one of the 

 most profitable parts of the farm, worth a hundred dollars an acre. 

 Managed as it ordinarily is, it is not highly profitable. If a man is not 

 willing to adopt these methods and get the right sort of permanent 

 pasture, he might just as well put it under rotation. It don't pay to have 

 permanent pasture lazying around and putting in half its time. When 

 land gets to be worth a hundred dollars an acre it must work all sum- 

 mer, and if it is not working must be made to work. 



