GROWING BY IRRIGATION. 279 



Irrigation is the modern miracle of the West and 

 Southwest. It has built railways and towns and 

 cities and states. And the first thing to follow the 

 irrigator's shovel is the alfalfa plant. 



Alfalfa Loves Desert Soils. Alfalfa loves new 

 desert soils. They are not always fertile to the 

 touch of wheat or maize or potatoes. Sometimes 

 indeed they spurn such things and the poor settler 

 would be in sorry plight were it not for alfalfa. 

 Nearly all desert soils love alfalfa. After it has 

 grown for a time, then will grow grain or beets or 

 vines or orchards or any other good things. 



The only desert soils that refuse to grow alfalfa 

 are those that have in them too much of a good 

 thing, too much alkali that is, too much of sulphate 

 of soda, carbonate of soda and other salts. Even 

 these soils can be brought into alfalfa by right man- 

 agement. Drainage with tiles laid deep under the 

 ground will drain off the excess of alkalies; some- 

 times they can be freed of injurious excess by flood- 

 ing over the surface and dissolving and washing 

 away the excess of alkalies that have risen to the 

 surface by the evaporation of the soil water. 



It is simply marvelous what desert land will do 

 after alfalfa has grown on it. The writer has seen 

 potatoes grown after alfalfa in the valleys of Utah 

 yielding as much as 1,000 bushels per acre. Wheat 

 on alfalfa sod in the San Luis valley of Colorado 

 has yielded more than 100 bushels per acre. 



Alfalfa in Arid Agriculture. Alfalfa is the 

 foundation stone of all the agriculture of the arid 



