246 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



nature assist us in selecting out of the many those few which have 

 the desired quality of greater resistance to severe winter condi- 

 tions. The custom in our nursery is to plant clover seeds a foot 

 apart each way, and to not allow plants to go to seed the first year. 

 These plants are left rather exposed during the winter, and those 

 which survive are allowed to produce seed the second year. The 

 third year seeds from each of these hardy plants are planted in 

 centgener plots, a foot apart each way. The succeeding winter 

 again tests these fraternity groups of plants, and measures are thus 

 taken of the hardiness of the blood of the respective mother plants. 

 In this way the station is trying to secure hardy blood lines of clover 

 plants which will yield heavily both for first and second crops of 

 hay, as well as better endure our severe winters. Several more 

 years must elapse before we can hope to have any of these hardy 

 stocks in sufficient quantity for general distribution. This appears 

 like very slow progress. If any one can give us a better method, 

 we shall be delighted to consider it and give it a trial. 



It might be said that any one desiring to start into the nursery 

 breeding of clover could do' no' better than to secure seeds from 

 plants in Minnesota along the roadside or in the fields where clover 

 has been seeded a number of years previously. The fact, however, 

 that there is no assurance but that these plants may have been an- 

 nually reproduced from seed or may have been especially favored 

 by being covered with snow, illustrates that careful nursery trials 

 are necessary to determine the hardiness and value of any given 

 selected stock. 



Breeding Alfalfa. — This station has been fortunate in securing 

 varieties of alfalfa from this and other states and from northern 

 Turkey which evidently are hardier than the ordinary commercial 

 alfalfa seed produced in the west and southwest. A few of these 

 hardy native and Turkestan forms of alfalfa are being rather ex- 

 tensively bred. The general plan of breeding these is to plant of 

 each hardy stock 1,000 or more plants, two feet apart each way, one 

 plant in a hill. These seeds are planted in the early spring, and the 

 plants are cultivated during the first season. They will have made 

 a strong growth by winter. Since these plants are almost hardy, the 

 tops are sheared off close to the ground, that the severe climatic 

 conditions may result in destroying and killing all but the compara- 

 tively few hardiest. Of those plants which survive seeds are saved 

 from those with greatest vigor for the first crop, which is cut early 

 in the season, and from those showing largest growth and heaviest 

 seed production for the second crop, which ripens late in the sea- 

 son. Seeds from each of these mother plants are separately planted 



