64 FOR BETTER CROPS 



lasting-, the most productive, the most efficient soil enricher. It 

 is the most beautiful, and it yields hay of the highest quality. 



Alfalfa is not new to the United States, but only within 

 recent years has its culture been well understood, and a few 

 essentials of its success been learned. It revels in dry land made 

 sweet with lime (where this is needed)^ and rich with manures. 

 Alfalfa is the most energetic soil-enricher of all the clovers, but 

 it must find fertile soil on which to begin, and cannot, like sweet 

 clover, begin on wornout lands. Once it is well established, 

 however, its ability to build up the field on which it stands, and 

 the adjoining fields (from the manure made by feeding the hay), 

 is nothing less than marvelous. 



The lS"ew Jersey experiment station has shown that the yield 

 of an acre of good alfalfa contains fertiliziug ingredients that 

 in the shape of commercial fertilizers would cost on the market 



Harvesting alfalfa 



at least $65.00. So it can readily be seen that once alfalfa is 

 established on a farm, and the hay fed thereon, and the manure 

 saved, that farm must very rapidly increase in productiveness. 

 Alfalfa is a perennial, enduring on well drained soil from five 

 to fifty years with one sowing. It may be cut from three to five 

 times a year, and will yield, in the regions of the corn-belt, from 

 three to six tons of hay per acre. The composition of alfalfa 

 hay is such that it has almost the same nutritive value as wheat 

 bran, and may be substituted for wheat bran in the ration of 

 clover with good results. As a feed for all classes of live stock 

 it is unexcelled. Every animal upon the farm loves alfalfa, and 

 thrives upon it. As a pasture plant it has no equal in the 

 amount which animals will gain from an acre of it ; as much 

 as 600 pounds of pork per acre being frequently reported 

 where hogs have grazed it. It is also the best horse pasture 



