Dkckmber, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



753 



ed or scarified seed imist be sown in tlie si)ring, and 

 generally dry weather takes it before it is large 

 enough to withstand a drouth. If sown in Novem- 

 ber or before March 1 it will have growth enough by 

 May 1 to stand any weather — but only unhulled 

 northern seed must be used. A. Bloominqdale. 



The above puts the vahie of sweet clovei* 

 for stock rather strongly; but it may be all 

 right. I should say 20 to 25 lbs. of seed 

 (o the acre is more than is needed; but for 

 unhulled seed it may be all right; and the 

 direction for sowing it from Nov. 1 to 

 IM'arch 1 is not exactly what I should advise ; 

 but. unfortunately, the writer does not tell 

 where he lives. I do wish every writer for 

 agricultural periodicals would tell where he 

 lives and when he wrote. It is especially 

 important that he give his county and state, 

 even if he does not give his address. Some 

 time ago we had a crop of sweet clover that 

 was cut for seed; but it was rained on so 

 many times that we feared the seed was un- 

 fit to send out ; but after being hulled and 

 scarified we sowed it in our cornfield last 

 summer, 1917, and this summer also, after 

 the last cultivating, and both times it cam.e 

 up so thick it seemed as if every grain must 

 have germinated. As sweet-clover seed is 

 now quoted in catalogs and daily papers 

 among other clovers, and is on sale at al- 

 most every seedstore, we have discontinued 

 offering it. It is certainly very refreshing 

 to me to see that it is now quoted side by 

 side as of equal importance with the other 

 clovers. The writer of the above, as you 

 will notice, puts it ahead of all the other 

 clovers, not even excepting alfalfa. 



SWEET CLOVER THE BIGGEST STORY OF ALL. 



We clip the following from The Rural 

 New Yorker : 



SWEET CLOVER ON STUMP LAND. 



We have urged our readers to try sweet clover, 

 and have printed some true stories about the work 

 this plant can do. Now comes a report from Ore- 

 gon, vouclied for by reliable men. There is much 

 stump land in tha Pacific Coast country. It is usu- 

 nll\- good .soil, but the cost of clearing and stumping 

 is so great that it will hardly pay as a business 

 proposition. Near Grant's Pass a new plan was 

 tried out in handling this kind of land. The stumps 

 will lareely decay in about five years, and the prob- 

 lem was to make these years productive if possible. 

 The plan was to seed sweet clover after burning 

 the land over and then using the plac« for pasture. 

 Here is the story as sent us: 



Having a lot of this kind of land to clear at 

 Winona ranch, and not wishing to waste the use of 

 it for a long lime, we tried the sweet-clover method 

 of clearing. W^e had four acres slashed, the timber 

 and brush cut and left on the ground just as it fell, 

 in the spring and early summer of 1915. Tliis 

 cost us $8 an acre by contract. 



In Novem1>er of that year we burned over this 

 slashing, getting a good clean burn with a fairly 

 deep layer of ashes. In the following February, be- 

 tween the first and the fifth, we sowed five pounds 

 per acre of scarified white-sweet-clover seed on the 

 ashes among the stumps which were so thick that 



it would have been absolutely impossible to harrow 

 or disk or work tlic ground in any way whatsoever. 

 We simply sowed the seed broadcast with an ordi- 

 nary Gaboon seeder. 



In every place where there was a good layer of 

 ashes the sweet clover came up splendidly, every 

 seed apparently growing, while where there was 

 little or no ash layer the stand was poor or lacking. 

 In this case the ash was good on about 90 per cent 

 of the land; and we got a fine stand on 90 per cent 

 of the four acres therefore. 



The following season, from February 1, 1917, on 

 thru the spring, summer, and fall we pastured 

 seven head of milch cows and an average of three 

 head of horses, mules, and other stock on this 

 piece of sweet clover, with no other feed from May 

 1 on, except 25 pounds of shorts per day to the 

 herd of milch cows. 



The cows kept in splendid condition, as did the 

 other stock; and the cows in milk averaged 900 

 pounds of milk per cow per month straight thru. 

 Those cows, registered Holsteins, gave a return 

 of $12.80 per cow per month net for their sweet- 

 clover pasture in butter fat and skim milk, after 

 deducting the labor charge of $3.70 per cow per 

 month. 



Meanwhile the sweet clover is growing as fast as 

 the stock eat it, and is seeding heavily in .spite of 

 the strenuous pasturing. It gi'ew to a height of 10 

 feet in places, and the cattle ate it down again to 

 about a foot high, at which height it now keeps 

 growing out and branching. 



Besides the excellent returns in milk from this pas- 

 ture among the stumps, the sweet clover is improv- 

 ing the land steadily by taking nitrogen from the 

 air and putting it into the ground as all legumes 

 do, and also by adding humus to the ground thru 

 the decay of its root after the second year. Also 

 the stumps are rotting out, thus greatly reducing the 

 cost of final clearing of the land to probably ten or 

 fifteen dollars per acre instead of sixty, as it 

 would have been originally. 



The cost of getting the land into swoet clover, 

 including slashing, burning, seed, and sowing, was 

 about $10 per acre; while the net returns in the 

 second crop year were well over $50 per acre at 

 the most conservative figure. 



Nothing is said in the above cupping 

 about bees. Surely they were on hand. We 

 take it the ashes wei'e from hard-wood tim- 

 ber. 



THE ELECTRIC WINDMILL FOR THE POULTRY- 

 KEEPER. 



Years ago there was talk about lighting 

 up the henhouse by means of lanterns oi- 

 electricity in order to get more eggs. But 

 I shall have to confess that I paid very 

 little attention to it because I thought it 

 was contrary to nature, or some new fad 

 that would soon be forgotten. And I do not 

 know but I was right in regard to the lat- 

 ter part of it, as it did seem to be forgot- 

 ten; but you may be sure I was both 

 startled and surprised to find an article on 

 this subject in the Tiiiral Xeir Yorker of 

 April 6. I give right here a clijiping con- 

 sisting of the first i)aragTaph of that ar- 

 ticle entitled "Extending Daylight for tlie 

 Hen." If you are keeping chickens to any 

 extent, I tliink you will send at onre to the 

 Rural people for the number containing the 

 whole article. 



