44 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



fine-ground bone and potash in various forms, and on lands 

 fertilized in this way I have never had any trouble in 

 growing clover, which I plough under in the spring. 



Secretary Sessions. Will you describe your soil? 



Mr. Hale. The most of the soil on our farm is a sandy 

 loam, rather light, some yellow loam, and rather a granite, 

 stony soil at the further end of it. We manure heavily with 

 phosphates and potash, depending very largely upon clover 

 for our nitrogen. 



I have not heard anything said about the time of sowing 

 clover. I get an al)undance of nitrogen for my business, 

 fruit culture, from clover. I understand from Professor 

 Roberts that it is sown in his section about the first of April. 

 I have sown clover almost every month in the year, but on 

 my farm in Connecticut I find that July, of all the months 

 in the year, is the best. By sowing clover at that time in 

 our orchards, in some of our berry fields, or in our corn 

 fields, we get a good stand of ch)ver ; it makes a fine 

 growth before fall, in the winter it is in perfect condition, 

 and the next May Ave have a field of clover there that makes 

 us all lauoh and makes the land lauii'h. We sometimes sow 

 it as late as the latter part of August, and we have never 

 had trouble, but usually the middle or last part of July 

 seems to be the best time. We harrow it in with a 

 cultivator. Sometimes if it is a rainy time we do nothing 

 with it, but let the rain carry the seed into the ground. 



I have had no experience in Connecticut in raising corn, 

 but several years ago I bought what was considered a worn- 

 out farm in Georgia, and on one portion of that fiirm there 

 was a cotton field of eighty acres which the people about 

 town used to laugh at me occasionally for l)uying. " Well, 

 Mr. Hale," they would say, " you bought a very fine planta- 

 tion over there, but you ijot rather stuck on that old cotton 

 field." Well, we plougiicd that field this last February, 

 and in Marcli })lant(Ml it with corn in check-rows four feet 

 each way. We i)louglu'd it rousoiialtly deep with a wheel 

 plough, applying six dollars' worth of a commercial fertilizer 

 per acre, and planted it with corn. AVo did not cultivate it 

 before it came up, as the professor did, because it came up 

 very quickly ; but after it had got to be two or three inches 



