SWEET CLOVES AND ALFALFA. 



In reply to your request for experience in inocu- 

 lating alfalfa with sweet clover, page 652, I will say 

 that, while my experience is rather limited, still I 

 have experimented with them for several years. A 

 number of years ago I secured a trial package of sweet 

 ciover and sowed it in the spring on a rather thin 

 clay soil. It grew very well, but I found that it did 

 not develop tubercles on the roots. After the second 

 year the ground was reseeded from seed falling upon 

 the ground. This crop developed tubercles on the 

 roots, and grew six to seven feet high. The seed got 

 scattered near our yard and grew from year to year. 

 Soil taken from about the roots of the sweet clover 

 was scattered over a plot of alfalfa which had failed 

 to develop tubercles, and was looking rather sickly. 

 In a few weeks the alfalfa changed to a dark green 

 and grew rapidly. Upon examination I found that, 

 where the soil from the sweet clover had been put, 

 the tubercles were thick on the alfalfa roots, but 

 on a part where there was no soil scattered from the 

 sweet clover the alfalfa looked yellow, and no tu- 

 bercles were found. I then inoculated the remainder 

 of the plot, and could notice an improvement in the 

 growth of alfalfa in about two weeks. A. J. LEGG. 



West Virginia, Sept. 28, 1907. 



SWEET CLOVER AS STOCK FOOD. 



The following is suggested by reading Mr. Legg*s 

 article above, "Sweet Clover and Alfalfa." There 

 are wrong impressions regarding the plant. Here it 

 grows very rank on the roadsides, and in some fields. 

 I used to think, like Mr. L/egg, that stock would not 

 eat it, for I often took care to notice when driving 

 along a road on the sides of which it grew as high 

 as a horse's back, whether the droves of stock, cattle 

 principally, fed on it, and never did I see that a 

 plant had been nipped. Later, in a field where a lot of 

 large steers were pasturing, the sweet clover grew in 

 great abundance, and the cattle, by feeding on it, had 

 cut it down to about knee-high. It had made a*large 



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