474 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



During the first season the growth should be cut down every time it 

 reaches a height of five or six inches. Where a nurse crop is used this treat- 

 ment should also be practiced after the latter has been removed. 



If the crop is grown for hay it should be cut every time about one-tenth 

 of the blooms have appeared. It is generally not wise to try to get a hay 

 crop the first season. 



Alfalfa should not be pastured the first season and never closely. When 

 cattle or sheep are pastured on it, care must be taken to prevent bloating. 



Cultivation with a disc harrow, set shallow, after cutting in July and 

 August, if the soil is dry, is likely to be beneficial. 



LUCERNE OR ALFALFA. 



Wallaces^ Farmer. 



Most of our readers regard alfalfa growing as a comparatively new thing; 

 that it can be grown successfully only under irrigation or on the dryer and 

 lighter lands west of the Missouri or in the Missouri valley. Under the name 

 of Lucerne it was grown in the Eastern States nearly seventy years ago. 

 Looking over an old volume of the monthly Genesee Farmer of the year 

 1833, we found a number of communications on the growing of what they 

 called Lucerne grass. This is the same as alfalfa and was called Lucerne 

 because it was brought into the Eastern States from the vicinity of Lucerne, 

 Switzerland; whereas the alfalfa, as we know it, was brought by the Moors 

 from the river Euphrates, where we have no doubt it grew luxuriantly in the 

 time of Daniel and Ezekiel, if not in the time of Abraham. By the Span- 

 iards it was taken to Chili and Peru and from thence apparently came to 

 California and has in the last thirty or forty years been continually travel- 

 ing eastward. We have no doubt that the environment has modified these 

 two varieties, but botanically and for all intents and purposes they are the 

 same. 



One correspondent from Roxbury, Massachusetts, wrote a letter to the 

 Genesee Farmer in 1835, then in 1838 sent it to the editor, stating that he 

 had withheld it from a fear that he had annoyed the people with Lucerne 

 grass and that they would begin to call him a man of one idea. Having cut 

 a third crop on the 6th of October in a dry year, he ventured to send the 

 communication to the Genesee Farmer, and, replying to a question as to 

 what were the peculiar advantages which he had experienced from this 

 grass he answered: 



''First, double crops in wheat at least on the same extent of ground, 

 having secured two good crops the first season in which it was sown; sec- 

 ond , that it will endure the severest drought , when all other grasses fail; and , 

 third, that it is a favorite grass with the horse and cow and will fatten them 

 faster than any other grass; that it will do as much for a horse as an ample 

 supply of grass and four pounds of grain, and aid in keeping flesh and 

 strength." He states further, that his success is not due to any peculiar 



