FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 475 



care or high culture; that he has treated it exactly like red clover and put it 

 on his worst lands. He tells the farmer that it will not grow on moist, 

 muddy lands at all; that it can not bear low laads; that it will die if water 

 rests upon it in the winter. He explains the small attention given to its cul- 

 ture by the fact that the seed has to be imported and costs fourteen cents a 

 pound and requires twenty pounds to the acre, and most men are not 

 willing to go to that expense. 



The next year another subscriber referring to this writer's experience 

 writes that he gave up growing clover because of the very rapid growth of 

 weeds and gave his attention to Lucerne, sowing it broadcast on the 19th of 

 July, on a sandy loam; that in two months he pulled up a plant which meas- 

 ured thirty inches from the tip of the leaves to the point of the root; that he 

 cut it on the 9th of June, 1837, and on the 9th of every subsequent month till 

 October, the growth being eighteen inches a month. His conclusions are 

 that Lucerne should be thickly sown, twenty pounds to the acre, upon sand 

 or sandy loam with slope sufficient to carry off the water, and without hol- 

 lows in which water can lodge. Second, that to prevent grass and weeds 

 from creeping into the Lucerne there should be a border around it of five or 

 six or more yards in width, in which should be grown every year mangel- 

 wurzel, potatoes, or other roots which require the soil to be well weeded. 

 He states further, that potatoes of the year previous are the best crop with 

 which to prepare the land, and that it should be plowed once or twice before 

 sowing, and !not sown until the end of May or early in June. 



It will be seen that these old farmers know as much about growing 

 Lucerne as any of our modern up-to-date fellows. In fact, we think his 

 suggestion that some kind of cultivated crop should be grown in a border 

 around the alfalfa field is a very good one, judging at least from the way, 

 according to our observation, in which weeds and grasses creep into alfalfa 

 fields in Nebraska. In fact, before seeing the article we had adopted the 

 practice in our own alfalfa fields in Nebraska. 



RAPE AS A CATCH CROP. 



Chicago Drovers' Journal. 



Not the least among the virtues of the rape plant is its great versatility in 

 spite of the fact that it is subject to frost, so that too early sowing may prove 

 its entire ruination. We have at various times pointed out the possibilities 

 of rape for the farmer when sown as a crop by itself. We have not had a 

 great deal to say of it as a catch crop, in spite of the fact that it possesses a 

 market value when sown with or in certain other cops to come on after these 

 have been harvested. Perhaps we can do no better in this connection than 

 to quote from Farmers' Bulletin No. 164, by A. S. Hitchcock, who, in 

 reviewing the topic ' 'rape as a forage crop," has this to say of it as a catch 

 crop, after enumerating some of its value as a first crop: 



"Another practice which is coming into favor in some sections of the 

 country is to sow rape in the spring with some grain crop, such as wheat, 

 allowing the former to take possession of the field when the latter has been 



