1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



75 



CONVERSATIONS WITH 

 DOOLITTLE 



ABOUT THE CLOVERS. 



" Mr. Doolittle, will you please tell what you 

 know of the drouth and winter-killing of the clo- 

 vers? I see so many different opinions expressed 

 in Gleanings that 1 do not feel it should be left 

 there; for in the part of York State in which I 

 live we are almost entirely dependent on the clo- 

 ver for our crop of honey. As you live on about 

 the same degree of latitude th.it I do, your knowl- 

 edge in this matter would be of help to me. If 

 the drouth has killed the clover, then my honey 

 crop must be a failure till the clover gets a foot- 

 hold again. " 



On page 1487, Dr. Miller says, " No rain fell 

 from August 11 till Sept. 27 — 47 days," and he 

 further adds that an examination of his pasture 

 revealed an "abundance of young clover," even 

 after such a prolonged drouth. VVe hardly had 

 rain enough to lay the dust in our public high- 

 ways from Aug. 1 to Nov. 1, or for 102 days, 

 and yet our clover, where not killed by too short 

 pasturage, seemed as lively as ever when winter 

 set in. I have never, in all my experience, known 

 of clover being killed by drouth. The roots go 

 to a depth of from a foot to twenty inches in the 

 soil, so are able to stand all the drouth we ever 

 have in this section of the country. I was quite 

 sure of this before this fall; but when some of 

 our most noted agriculturists went into print with 

 the statement that we had all better hold on to 

 all the old hay we had, because the drouth was 

 killing, or likely to kill, all of our meadows, I 

 took especial pains to watch the results. Even 

 the timothy and June grasses are mostly alive, so 

 that a favorable spring will bring us out in good 

 shape. Therefore I think the questioner need 

 have no fears for his crop of honey from clover, 

 if the season from now to blooming time is as 

 good as the average, unless the farmers of his sec- 

 tion are so careless of their best interests as to 

 "pasture their land to death." Dr. Miller found 

 the conditions in his horse-pasture much the same 

 as we find them here, where horses, young stock, 

 and especially sheep, are kept too near the starv- 

 ing-point on pastures and meadows during the 

 latter part of the drouth. 



Dr. Miller seems to question the statement, p. 

 1426, that " what kills the clovers \s r\oX drouth 

 but too much water in the ground, and hard 

 freezing, resulting in what we farmers generally 

 call -Lintcr-tilling,^' and well may he question 

 such an assertion. But the doctor is nearly as far 

 out of the way, since he thinks that "it isn't so 

 much freezing that hurts as thawing " But he 

 gets very close to the matter in the next few words 

 where he puts the blame on rapid freezing and 

 thawing. But under certain conditions, rapid 

 freezing and thawing have no bad effect on clo- 

 ver, as will be explained further on. 



I have been a close observer regarding this mat- 

 ter for forty years, or ever since I began keeping 

 bees, and every observation showed the same 

 cause for the winterkilling of the clovers. They 

 heave out Now, what is meant by "heaving 

 out ".' With the ground full of water it becomes 

 very soft, and thu " puddles" itself close around 

 the crown and upper part of the tap root of the 



clover-plant. Now it begins to freeze, and in 

 doing so the crown and top of the root are grip- 

 ped by the expansion of this puddle until they 

 are held as in an iron grasp. As the freezing also 

 lifts the soil by its expansion, the clover root is 

 stretched as the process goes on; but as there is 

 a little elasticity to the roots, this first freezing 

 does no harm, even if the continued cold causes 

 the ground to be frozen one, two, three, or four 

 feet deep, as is sometimes the case on some of 

 our exposed land. Whenever there comes a thaw 

 after this first freezing, no harm comes to the clo- 

 ver by its freezing again afterward, no matter 

 how often, so long as there remains an inch or 

 more of frozen ground underneath; but if the thaw 

 is continued until all the frost goes out of the 

 ground, when it comes to freeze again the crown 

 and root are again gripped at the top; and as the 

 stretch has already been taken out of the roots by 

 the first freeze (the soil about them having be- 

 come loosened through this freezing), they are 

 now lifted by the upper expansion of the soil, 

 and thus the whole plant is materially injured by 

 being lifted upward. Another thaw comes; the 

 puddled soil settles; again it freezes, with anoth- 

 er grip about the top of the root, and again the 

 plant is lifted. If this continues long enough, 

 either during winter or early spring, the plants 

 are lifted little by little during each change of 

 the temperature that goes below the freezing- 

 point, till the whole of the plant, roots and all, 

 lies prone on top of the ground. Whole fields 

 are then winter-killed, if all of these fields have 

 soil of like heaving nature. All clay, clay loam, 

 muck loam, and such like soils, are called "heav- 

 ing" soils, because, when they become saturated 

 with water, they incline more or less to become 

 soft and run together like thin cream; and as 

 each freezing and thawing tends to fine the soil, 

 the more freezing and thawing there is, the tight- 

 er the grip of each succeeding freeze, and the 

 greater the lift each time. Sandy or porous soils 

 do not tend to puddle any more than any soil 

 would when dry, and the clovers are little injured 

 on porous soils during winter, or on any soil 

 which is dry, or where the frost, after having en- 

 tered the soil, holds sway until the final thawing 

 in the spring. It is the continued freezing and 

 thawing, at any time of the year, after the first 

 hard frost has gone out of the ground^ that win- 

 ter-kills the clovers on heavy land. 



If the roots are raised only very slightly — 

 from one -fourth inch to one -fourth their 

 length — then they are injured to a certain extent, 

 but not so much but that they will nearly or 

 quite recover, if there is a wet spring, so the 

 drawn roots can catch hold of the soil again. 

 But with a dry spring, following a heaving win- 

 ter, the most of the clovers on heavy land are 

 winter-killed, whether drawn quite out of thesoil 

 or not. 



I hope that this discussion may give a little 

 help to those who have not understood the win- 

 ter-killing of clover 



Alfalfa roots so deeply that it is a very rare 

 thing that frost ever enters the ground deep 

 enough to disturb the lower part of the roots; 

 and the root, being so strong that it rarely breaks 

 off through the pulling process, is able to stand 

 and thrive on soils where the other clovers can 

 not survive except during a very favorable winter. 



