56 CLOVER CULTURE. 



Scarlet o& crimson clover. Within the last few years 

 a good deal has been said in the eastern and southern papers 

 with reference to scarlet or crimson clQver (trifolium incarna- 

 tum} an illustration'of which may be found on next page. This 

 is sown in midsummer or early autumn, and blooms, in the 

 latitude to which it is adapted, early in May. It grows from 

 twenty inches to twenty-eight inches in height, and is harvested 

 in time to prepare the ground for another crop. It has a 

 long slender head brilliant scarlet in color and yields large 

 crops which can be cut from the tenth of May to the first of 

 June, according to the latitude. The Delaware Experiment 

 station has recently been carrying on experiments with a view 

 of determining the value of this crop and reports that it yields 

 easily eight tons of green fodder per acre, if cut between the 

 5th and loth of May, that its roots run down four feet in 

 favorable locations and that it is superior to the ordinary red 

 or mammoth clover in two respects: i. Its ability to flourish 

 on relatively poor soils. 2. Its capacity for growth during 

 the tall, spring and in open winters. It also reports that it can 

 not be seeded with winter grain owing to the fact that it 

 grows when winter wheat or rye seem dormant and as the 

 result, one crop or the other would be destroyed. -It is 

 specially valuable for soiling and for plowing under as a 

 green crop instead of rye. European writers mention five 

 varieties of this clover, differing to some extent from each 

 other in their relative powers to withstand winter conditions, 

 and it may be that some variety may yet be introduced that 

 will be able to withstand the rigours of a northern winter. 

 Until this is done the crimson of scarlet clover must be 

 regarded as a crop especially adapted to the southern and bor- 

 der states. We tried it one year, on our own farms in south- 

 ern Iowa, sowing after harvest on wheat stubble, and the next 

 spring we failed to find a single stalk that had survived the win- 

 ter. Similar experiments were made at the Iowa Agricultural 

 College, and in Ifcinois in the latitude of North Missouri, so 

 that any variety vknown in America must be regarded as 

 .adapted only to the latitudes of the southern border states. 

 Having the same power of appropriating nitrogen from the 

 atmosphere, it will no doubt prove of great value where its 

 cultivation is practical, and especially to truck farmers who 

 after the removal of their crop can sow the land to clover and 

 plow it lender or use it for hay and turn the roocs in time for 

 a profitable crop on the same land next season. 



Our object in experimenting with it was to ascertain 



