HAMPSHIRE COUNTY FARMERS' MONTHLY 



HOW TO FIT ACID SOIL 



FOR ALFALFA 



I. Have the soil tested to find out how 

 much lime is required and lime it. 



There is an absolute correlation be- 

 tween the reaction of the soil and success 

 with alfalfa. Furthermore, there is a 

 definite mathematical relationship be- 

 tween the amount of acid in the soil and 

 the amount of lime required to neutralize 

 it. Application of an insufficient amount 

 of lime is useless. As well try to save the 

 life of a freezing man by warming him 

 up from 30 below to 10° below. He 

 would freeze just as hard, to all intents 

 and purposes, at 10° below as at 30° be- 

 low. So will alfalfa die just as dead at 

 pH 5.5 (on the chemist's scale of true 

 acidity) as at pH 5. Find out how 

 much lime is needed and put it on. 



II. Apply also 300 to 500 pounds per acre 

 of acid phosphate or a mixed fertilizer 

 containing an equivalent amount of 

 phosphoric acid. 



This phosphoric acid is applied, not 

 primarily as a fertilizer, but as a chemi- 

 cal to help the lime to precipitate and 

 render harmless one of the chief toxic 

 constituents of acid soils. It is always 

 required in connection with lime to fit 

 acid soils for the most successful growth 

 of alfalfa or clover — not perhaps or may 

 be either — but absolutely. 



III. Bear in mind that about all that the 

 lime and acid phosphate do is to remove 

 the handicap of toxic acidity so that good 

 farming methods can succeed where be- 

 fore they would have failed but that the 

 good farming methods still remain to be 

 applied. 



The man who uses lime and then sits 

 back and waits for results is due to be 

 disappointed. So is the man who "works 

 his head ofl"' on an acid soil. But the 

 combination of lime and good farming 

 methods makes a great team. 

 V. Good farming methods for mid-sum- 

 mer seeding of alfalfa. 



1. Use plenty of manure or fertilizer 

 or both to give the alfalfa seedlings a 

 good start. No legume, least of all al- 

 falfa, can "get its plant food from the 

 air" until it gets well establi.shed any 

 more than a day old calf could live on 

 hay. 



2. Clean the land of weed seed by 

 persistent shallow cultivation. The Acme 

 .or the smoothing-harrow is the right tool. 



3. Prepare the kind of a seed bed 

 needed by such small seeds — about the 

 sort of a seed bed which you would pre- 

 pare by hand in a little box for tomato 

 seeds, for example, only a lot firmer since 

 the alfalfa seedlings, in the absence of 

 favorable showers, may have to live on 

 ground water for days or even weeks, and 

 ground water will not rise through a seed 

 bed that is too loose and soft. 



4. Inoculate the seed or the soil or 

 both. 



5. Unless the soil is proven alfalfa 

 land with well-established inoculation it 

 is safer to include some timothy. Twenty 

 pounds of alfalfa and seven of timothy 

 per acre is the best mixture which we 

 have tried so far. 



6. Seed in July so the young plants 

 will get big enough to survive the winter 

 without getting half-killed or wor.se. 

 Without a doubt the man who originally 

 advocated August seeding lived at least 

 a hundred miles south of us or on a 

 natural alfalfa soil. 



7. Once you get a stand, remember the 

 fable about the goose and the golden egg 

 and take only two cuttings a year and 

 those at a materially later stage of 

 growth than has been recommended here- 

 tofore. Cut only when the crop ap- 

 proaches full bloom. The reason is that 

 it is only at the blooming period that the 

 alfalfa plant stores reserve nutrients in 

 the root to give it a new start in life. 

 And never cut a mid-summer seeding the 

 first fall. 



The primary object in bringing this 

 matter to your attention at this time is 

 to point out the need of an early start for 

 proposed mid-summer seedings. The lime 

 and acid phosphate should be on and 

 disked in by June 15 at the very latest 

 in order to allow for a reasonable period 

 of surface cultivation to kill weeds, pre- 

 pare a fine, firm seed bed and accumulate 

 a supply of moisture in the soil. 



J. B. Abbott. 



astrous results in reproduction. Rations 

 containing plenty of protein, but low in 

 lime, produce calves that were either dead 

 at birth or so weak that they died shortly 

 after. The feeding of timothy hay from 

 Stevens Point which had a calcium oxide 

 content of .7 to .8 per cent has given 

 somewhat mixed results. In some cases 

 the ofF.spring have been miserably poor 

 and died two or three days after birth; 

 but in one case the offspring was better 

 and lived. 



"It is possible that the method of curing 

 the roughage may be something of a 

 factor in the results obtained. Further 

 studies on the control of the processes 

 used in the curing of the fodder may un- 

 ravel this problem." 



EFFECT OF ROUGHAGES ON ACID 



SOILS ON REPRODUCTION 



The following article from Wisconsin 

 Bulletin No. 362 is of interest to dairy- 

 men in this county as much of our rough- 

 age is grown on veiy acid soils. 



"Normal reproduction can be disturbed 

 through improper nutrition. Observa- 

 tions over a number of years with dairy 

 cattle have been steadily pointing to this 

 fact. Especially is this disturbance 

 brought about through low mineral in- 

 take accompanied by a correspondingly 

 low intake of the antirachitic vitamine. 

 It is believed that earlier results secured 

 with wheat, wheat straw, and wheat 

 gluten, whereby the offspring were dead 

 o*r prematurely born, can be explained 

 wholly upon the basis of deficiency, pri- 

 marily of calcium and the antirachitic 

 vitamine rather than upon the old theory 

 of toxicity of the wheat grain. 



"Wisconsin has large areas of acid 

 soils, and the roughage grown on such 

 lands is inevitably low in lim6. This fact 

 has led to further trials in the feeding of 

 roughages giown upon these soils, such 

 as corn stover and timothy hay, to daii-y 

 cattle in order to determine their effect 

 upon reproduction. Hay obtained from a 

 highly acid soil containing less than 0.5 

 per cent of calcium oxide has given dis- 



BOTH LIME AND FERTILIZER 

 NEEDED FOR CLOVER 



Larger increases from liming are ob- 

 tained when the soil contains plenty of 

 available plant food than when the plant- 

 food deficiencies are not supplied, accord- 

 ing to tests by the Kentucky Experiment 

 Station; in fact, the profit from liming 

 on a well fertilized soil was over double 

 that where no fertilizer was applied. 

 Fertilizer used with lime very commonly 

 produces a larger increase than the sum 

 of the increases from fertilizer alone and 

 lime alone. It is, of course, a fruitless 

 question as to which is the more impor- 

 tant, lime or fertilizers. Both are im- 

 portant and should go hand in hand. 



A few years ago the Iowa Experiment 

 Station in a certain test limed a piece of 

 ground, before seeding oats, at the rate 

 of two tons of ground limestone per acre. 

 Red clover was also seeded at the same 

 time. Lengthwise of the field, various 

 fertilizer applications were made, rang- 

 ing from 50 to 400 pounds per acre. Also 

 some check strips were left that did not 

 have any fertilizer. The oats showed up 

 well, and the differences between the fer- 

 tilized and unfertilized plots could be 

 seen from far off. But the surprise came 

 in the clover. On the strips that were 

 not fertilized but which had been limed, 

 the clover stand was very poor; in fact, 

 the following year there was practically 

 no clover on these strips. Where the oats 

 were fertilized, on the other hand, even as 

 little as 50 pounds per acre, the stand 

 was good and the clover made a good 

 crop the next year. Here, of course, was 

 a phosphate-deficient soil. Fertilizer 

 alone probably would not have secured 

 good clover, but neither did lime alone. 

 Both are necessary on many soils. 



Don't Guess, Know ! 



You don't have to guess how much lime 

 your land needs for clover and alfalfa. 

 The County Agent or the Club Agent 

 will be glad to test your .soil for you. 



