288 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



crop, commonly of wheat, winter barley or rye. The 

 use of a nurse-crop is often an advantage, since it les- 

 sens the danger of the little seedlings being lifted out 

 by the frost or buried by repeated thawings and freez- 

 ings. Timothy sown alone on a good seedbed, well en- 

 riched, will come along better alone and make a fair 

 crop of hay the next season. If sown with wheat it may 

 be so far advanced as to struggle with the wheat for 

 supremacy, so it is common in some sections to sow the 

 timothy 10 days after the wheat to hold it in check. It 

 is always better for the grasses if the nurse-crop is 

 mown off early for hay, as sometimes when it is per- 

 mitted to ripen grain it has so shaded the land and 

 drained it of its moisture that the little seedling grasses 

 are lost. 



' Seeding Clovers in the Spring. Where grasses have 

 been sown in the fall the clovers are commonly best 

 added in the spring. Fall-sown clovers need early sow- 

 ing in northern climes, though in the South they are best 

 and may be sown as late as November in the Gulf States. 

 Commonly in the regions where grass is grown clovers 

 are added in spring. There are several methods of doing 

 this. The easiest and perhaps most common is to sow on 

 frozen ground at a time when the frost has honey- 

 combed the land. This lets the seed sink down and 

 become more or less covered. Others sow as early as 

 February and trust to the freezing and thawing of win- 

 ter to bury the seed. Yet others sow half their seed 

 over the ground early and the remaining half after 

 growth starts in the spring. It has been my experience 

 that each way will succeed if the soil is right, though 



