SOWING FERTILIZER WITH SEED 89 



sod. One first drains the wet places in the pasture, plows 

 the land in early spring, disks and harrows it and sows 

 to alfalfa with a good dressing of fertilizer. It takes well 

 on such a seedbed. In two years there is a splendid mix- 

 ture of alfalfa and bluegrass and in four years the heaviest 

 of bluegrass and not much alfalfa left. 



Example of Successful Seeding. In 1900 we bought 

 a clay hill field above our own land. It had not been in 

 grass for half a century. It was beginning to wash and 

 gully badly and the clay was covering our better kept 

 soil below. We had little expectation of profit from this 

 field for many years, believing that regeneration would 

 be slow. There was no available manure for it. We 

 therefore bought commercial fertilizers, mixing them our- 

 selves. Acid phosphate and tankage were the ingredients, 

 the tankage being slaughter-house waste, dried and 

 ground, the acid phosphate the bones of pre-historic ani- 

 mal life, treated with sulphuric acid to make it dissolve 

 in the soil and available to plants. We disked the field 

 very early in spring and as deep as we could, then drilled 

 in about 300 pounds per acre of this fertilizer. We sowed 

 two bushels of barley per acre and right behind the drill 

 a mixture of grass seeds ; there were brome grass, orchard 

 grass, timothy, Kentucky bluegrass and white clover. 

 After sowing the seed we rolled it with a 2,2OO-pound 

 roller, bringing it down to a firm condition, so that 

 the moisture would. come clear to the surface. It proved 

 to be a dry summer. When the barley grew up about 

 1 8" we turned in sheep which ate it down; then we took 

 them off, Their tiny feet yet further firmed the soil 



