CLOVER CULTURE. 75 



early spring, the blue grass coming next, followed by 

 timothy and clovers. After maturing seed the blue grass will 

 rest while the clovers are making their most vigorous growth, 

 but will revive and take full possession of the field when the 

 clovers are taking time to ripen, their seed crop. The dispo- 

 sition of blue grass and white clover to usurp full possession 

 of permanent pastures renders it somewhat difficult to retain 

 the red and mammoth. The difficulty may be overcome by 

 scarifying the surface with a disc harrow and then sowing the 

 seeds of the red and mammoth clovers, or by scattering ma- 

 nure containing these seeds on such pastures during the win- 

 ter season. On some soils especially adapted to clovers, these 

 retain their place in the permanent pasture much longer than 

 on others, and in all pastures there is a constant contest among 

 the grasses themselves for the supremacy. 



Where it is desirable to seed rough lands in prairie grass- 

 es to permanent pasture, the following mixture, per acre, 

 may be used with advantage: 



Red Clover ' 8 pounds 



Blue Grass 7 pounds 



White Clover 1 pound 



This should be sown before the frost leaves the ground 

 in the spring, the wild grass having been burned off the pre- 

 vious autumn. It should then be pastured heavily, prefera- 

 bly with sheep, calves or hogs, in order to check the growth 

 of the wild grasses and allow the cultivated varieties air and 

 sunlight. The tramping of the soil will insure covering, 

 and, unless the ground be excessively wet, will not materi- 

 ally injure the young plants of the cultivated grasses. The 

 pasturing should be as close as possible the first year, but in 

 the second year the red clover should be allowed to produce 

 seed and thus re-seed the ground. For some reason we have 

 never succeeded so well on these pastures with mammoth 

 clover as with the common red. Where a large acreage is to 

 be seeded it is not practicable usually to pasture with either 

 sheep, hogs or calves. In that case yearling or two-year-old 

 steers should be used, and enough should be turned in to 

 keep the wild grass very short during the entire summer. 

 The only difficulty in this method of seeding is that the best 

 results in securing a speedy transformation of the wild into 

 the tame pasture require more cattle to the acre than is 

 profitable for their owner. 



We are no c f prepared to say how far West of the Missouri 



