156 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



The Soil That Red Clover Likes. One can form a 

 good idea of soil by the way red clover thrives on it. If 

 the clover is small, slender, easily displaced by weeds and 

 grasses, the soil needs something. Perhaps the need is 

 carbonate of lime; in fact, 10 chances to one it needs 

 that since lime soils will grow healthy, vigorous clover 

 even if it is small. Maybe the land needs draining or 

 needs phosphorus, less often potassium or vegetable mat- 

 ter. Any one of these lacks may be fatal to good clover 

 growth. A soil well underdrained, strongly calcareous, 

 and with enough phosphorus and a dash of vegetable 

 matter thrown in, produces red clover in splendid vigor. 

 Wood ashes make red clover grow. On many areas that 

 now produce it only sparingly, applications of lime make 

 conditions right and it succeeds well. It is the basal 

 truth that legumes love lime because alkaline earths favor 

 their nourishing bacteria. 



Seed and Seeding. Red clover seed is commonly 

 fairly free from adulterants, especially when one selects 

 a seedman with some care. True, there are innumerable 

 weed seeds found in poorly cleaned red clover seed, but 

 most of these can be cleaned out by use of proper ma- 

 chinery. The various sorts of plantain are the most com- 

 mon weed seeds found, and they make very bad pests in 

 new cloverfields. Clover dodder is found sometimes and 

 is a deadly weed. A farmer who would cut for seed a 

 field infested with dodder must have something wrong 

 with his moral faculties. Occasionally clover seed is in- 

 tentionally adulterated by seedsmen. Among the things 

 put in have been alfalfa and the little trefoils. Alfalfa 



