158 FORAGE PLANTS AND THEIR CULTURE 



it blooms but once a year, no matter how favorable the 

 conditions may be after cutting. The plants are very 

 long-lived and under favorable conditions there seems to 

 be no limit to the time endurance of a blue-grass pasture. 

 In the humid region west of the Cascade Mountains in 

 Oregon, Washington and British Columbia, blue-grass 

 is rather troublesome as a weed, especially in berry patches 

 and similar places that cannot be plowed. 



The grass is very palatable to all classes of live stock, 

 much more so than any other grass so capable of main- 

 taining itself. It is distinctly exceeded in palatability 

 only by smooth brome-grass. 



At the Kansas Experiment Station the roots of blue- 

 grass on an old sod were found to penetrate to a depth of 

 four feet, but there were comparatively few below 18 

 inches. They are densest in the top six inches. 



147. Culture. Probably 90 per cent of the blue- 

 grass pastures in America have developed spontaneously. 

 On most farms the untillable land is left for pasture, and 

 in the timothy region this is eventually composed mainly 

 of blue-grass with more or less white clover and redtop. 

 On the best blue-grass soils, however, the returns are 

 profitable enough so that large areas of tillable land 

 are kept permanently in pasture. 



No definite systems have yet become established for 

 using blue-grass in rotations, primarily because blue- 

 grass pastures improve with age, at least for several 

 years. 



Where sown, the seed is best planted in fall. A com- 

 mon method is to sow it with timothy and clover, sowing 

 the seed in fall with the timothy. After two years in 

 clover and timothy for hay, the land is then pastured and 

 the blue-grass finally occupies the land as the timothy 



