1903 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



219 



whether his alfalfa pnxliiced honey or 

 not I do not know; but I think it quite 

 likely. General Washin.i;ton was quite 

 an extensive farmer in his later days 

 owning many thousand acres of land. 



Alfalfa has been tried in Illinois for 

 many years by different ones but with- 

 out success until Prof. Hopkins began 

 growing it on infected soil, where he 

 has found it to do well, producing as 

 high as 10 Va tons per acre in a single 

 season. Prof. Hopkins of the Illinois 

 Experiment Station has this year sent 

 infected soil to something like 200 

 farmers in Illinois for alfalfa growing, 

 so Illinois bids fair to become an al- 

 falfa-growing state. 



Now, one thing more. Of all the 

 ■bacteria that inhabit the soil and cause 

 the clover to live from the nitrogen of 

 the air, sweet clover is probably the 

 most powerful of all, which shows 

 plainly for itself, as it will thrive and 

 produce both seed and honey in abun- 

 dance on soil so poor that the worst 

 weeds will not grow at all, and even 

 on alfalfa land that is ytoison to nearly 

 all other vegetation. 



Why is this? Simply that sweet clo- 

 ver when aided by its own bacteria 

 lives almost entirely from the nitrogen 

 of the air, (of course, getting a small 

 amount of phosphates, etc., from the 

 soil). Not only so but these nitrogen 

 gjithering bacteria are constantly and 

 silently gathering nitrogen — the most 

 precious element to plant life — and 

 placing it in the soil. 



One sweet clover plant will furnish 

 a home in its tubercles for a thousand 

 million bacteria, or even more. Now 

 in the far East are old farms wiiich 

 have Ijecome so deficient in nitrogen 

 that they are con.sidered worn out or 

 worthless and have lieen abandoned, 

 notwithstanding these farms contain 

 the other elements in abundance or 

 could be so with slight cost, as the 

 other elements are cheap in price. 



If sweet clover were sown on these 

 same farms they could i.e made valu- 

 able and rich almost without cost. In- 

 fected soil would prol)ably have to be 

 also sown to get quick results, but 

 when once set thickly to sweet clover 

 with their nitrogen gathering bacteria 

 ten acres of the same would gather 

 nitrogen from the air anl fix it in the 

 soil when plowed under faster than 

 one man could haul it in a wagon from 



the nearest city in the form of barn- 

 yard manure. That despised sweet 

 clover will some day be found to be 

 the only hope of reclaiming many bar- 

 I'en farms. 



For the benefit of the Texas Experi- 

 ment Station who tried different honey 

 plants and failed, I want to say, that 

 in order to get sweet clover to do well, 

 much good would result if you woulfl 

 get soil from a thriving sweet clover 

 patch and inoculate your soil. And in 

 the same way you could grow other 

 clovers. All seed contains bacteria, 

 but especially in a dry season there 

 would not be enough to be of much 

 Ijenefit until the clover had perished. 

 These bacteria being a form of vege- 

 table life moisture is necessary to their 

 rapid propagation. I sowed this spring 

 a patch of alfalfa (not quite an acre), 

 and sowed on 100 pounds of infecte'd 

 soil. I find it takes nearly all the first 

 season for the bacteria to multiply so 

 as to fill the soil as no tubercles were 

 formed until July and now. September 

 !)th, about one-half of the plants have 

 tubercles. The alfalfa looked very 

 sick and yellow in .Tiily but noAv it has 

 taken on a dark green color and looks 

 line. 



I have experimented a good deal 

 with catnip. Besides sowing in waste 

 places I sowed one aci'e last fall. I 

 find that it does best in very rich soil, 

 in fact, in poor soil it did nothing. 

 Wliere there is waste land containing 

 leaf mold, old brush piles or any de- 

 caying logs or wood I believe- catnip 

 ahead of anything as a honey plant, 

 but for poor or only medium rich soil 

 1 think sweet clover is far ahead of 

 anything I have tried. 



Williamsfield, 111., Sept. !>, 19(13. 



Mr. .1. S. Harbi.son, the venerable 

 Pennsylvanian who introduced apicul- 

 ture on the Pacific coast away back 

 in the fifties, and there earned the 

 distinction of being the largest bee- 

 keeper in the woi'ld — owning at one 

 time six thousand colonies — was pres- 

 ent at the recent convention at Los 

 Angeles, where many prominent apiar- 

 ists of the United States met him for 

 the first time, and thoroughly enjoyed 

 the ac(iuaintance there formed. Mr. 

 Harbison is now 77 years of age. 



