any rate) or grazed, so that no seed can develop, the 

 plant seems to lose its natural tendency to give up 

 life after two years' growth, and will continue to 

 produce good crops for several years in succession. 

 It has been fully ten years since I have sown any 

 melilotus seed, and yet I find it every year more or 

 less plentiful and luxuriant on my Johnson grass and 

 Bermuda grass meadows. Of course the presence 

 ot this plant on the lands named is highly bene- 

 ficial to these meadows, the coarse, deeply penetrating 

 tap roots of the melilotus opening up the compact 

 soil and thus conducing to the better growth of botti 

 Johnson and Bermuda grasses. Hay made from meli- 

 lotus when the plant is in just the right stage of 

 growth for best results, and properly cured, is a hay 

 that is in every sense equal to the best quality cow- 

 pea vine or any of the clover family. 

 Mississippi, June 15, 1907. EDWIN MONTGOMERY. 



SWEET CLOVER FOR MULCH. 



In regard to growing mulch crops for straw- 

 berries, I have never found anything better than the 

 sweet clover growing along the roadsides and on 

 railroad embankments. Wherever it has been grow- 

 ing for a year or two it has all other weeds choked 

 out, thereby preventing the bringing in of other 

 weed seeds. I cut it when first in blossom. It 

 stands then about four to six feet high. After let- 

 ting it lie for a week to dry out I haul it in while 

 wet with dew, to save the leaves, and stack it up 

 ready for spreading over the strawberry beds in the 

 fall (about one-quarter acre). Of course larger grow- 

 ers may not find it plentiful enough to supply their 

 needs, but why not raise it? It seems to thrive almost 

 anywhere, even in the cinders and stones of rail- 

 road embankments. I believe I could raise a Is ger 

 bulk of it on a given piece of land than any c,rher 

 crop for mulch, corn not excepted. Furthermore, 

 it lies not so flat or heavy on the berries as corn- 

 stalks, catches more snow on account of its spreading 

 branches, and is heavy enough not to blow away. 



Aug. 24, 1907. G. H. 



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