THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



405 



A Sweet Clover Council in Iowa. 



To popularize a weed in fifteen years 

 and bring it to a high state of produc- 

 tiveness is the ideal accomplished by 

 Frank Coverdale in Clinton County, 

 Iowa. Through the aid of County Crop 

 Adviser Mosher, they recently suc- 

 ceeded in gathering nearly GOO inter- 

 ested farmers from Illinois and Iowa 

 to give a few hours to the study of the 

 plant. A real picnic it was of inter- 

 ested progressive Illinois and Iowa 

 farmers. 



Judge Quarton of Kossuth county 

 was among the speakers. Some quota- 

 tions from his remarks are appended: 



"I want you to understand that stock 

 will eat it. They will not eat it when 

 first given to them ; either will a 

 western horse eat corn when he first 

 sees it. You must educate them to 

 eat sweet clover. It is the greatest 

 fertilizer, one of the best feeds, and 

 absolutely one of the most profitable 

 seed crops produced on the farm. It 

 will grow in any kind of soil except 

 waterlogged soil and marshy land rni- 

 properly drained. It will grow in the 

 /loorest soil, being seemingly adaptea 

 to the clay soils. You can sow it in 

 any month of the year. I sow it on 

 the snow in December. Sown in June 

 or July, no matter how dry the weath- 

 er-, it will come and flourish, for it 

 needs but little nitrogen to make it grow. 

 Not all the seed will grow. Only 

 about thirty to forty per cent will 

 usually grow. I always test my seed 

 before sowing and 70 to 80 per cent 

 grows. For the past eleven years I 

 have gone to the roadside to gather my 

 seed. I sow twenty pounds of hulled 

 seed to the acre. The hulled seed is 

 the best. It germinates stronger seem- 

 ingly and costs about the same price 

 as the unhulled. Sweet clover seed 

 will run from 4 to 12 bushels to the 

 acre. I thresh my seed by hand. I 

 haul about half a load of clover in on 

 canvas when the dew is still on, slight- 

 ly damp to prevent the loss of seed, 

 which is great if handled when dry. I 

 then take the part- of a load, allow it 

 to stand in the sun for half a day, when 

 I use an ordinary pitchfork to beat the 

 seed out of it on the canvas. The 

 seed shatters very easily. 



I always make my first cutting espe- 

 cially high, the second and third com- 

 paratively high, allowing for a few 

 leaves to be left in the stub. Other- 

 wise you are in danger of killing it. 



The food value is as high as a 

 It does not bloat cattle. The valuc^^ic 

 part of the plant is the leaf. The stalk 

 is not so palatable or nutritious, al- 

 though I have seen my cows eating 

 the whole plant when the stalk was as 

 large as my finger when cut. It will 

 not crow in acid soils. Lime should be 

 used and I feel that is the secret in 

 successfully growing sweet clover. It 

 is no harder to cure for hay than al- 

 falfa. It is handled practically the 

 same as alfalfa. I absolutely believe 

 that sweet clover is the greatest fer- 

 tilizer known to man. Its nitrogen 

 gathering capacity combined with its 

 great amount of talk produced makes 

 it doubly valuable in giving the land 

 humus together with nitrogen. I have 

 grown corn following sweet clover 

 which yielded eighty bushels per acre 

 for a nitmber of consecutive years." 



So little had been known about sweet 

 clover that Mr. Coverdale experiment- 

 ed with lime, lime with manure, man- 

 ure, and no treatment, on a small scale. 

 With these four plots all sown about 

 May 1.5, 1913, a practical demonstration 

 was observed. It was shown beyond 

 doubt that the use of lime and manure 

 are prime requisites in the successful 

 culture of sweet clover on eastern Iowa 

 soils. Some soils of Iowa do not re- 

 quire lime, others will not grow al- 

 falfa or sweet clover unless they are 

 properly prepared, drained and limed. 

 Concerning another field, Mr. Cover- 

 dale said : 



"This is my pasture land for my 

 cattle. There is about 35 acres in this 

 field and for a number of weeks we 

 had ninety head of cattle on this field. 

 Up to a week ago, ever since the clover 

 started in the spring, I have had one 

 carload of big steers feeding here. Al- 

 though on soil unusually thin, badly cut 

 by ditches, the heavy growth is difficult 

 to make a path through. I sowed this 

 piece 15 years ago and it has never 

 been changed since. Those heavy stalks 

 break down each year, forming a 

 wealth of humus and organic matter." 



No work of an experimental nature 

 has been done as to its usefulness as a 

 forage crop, but this year 150 head ot 

 thrifty, vigorous pigs were found living 

 on the tiny, tender shoots. A neighbor 

 asserts that the pigs relish it to such 

 an extent that corn has had little at- 

 traction for them in the evening when 

 they returned from the field. 



The study of this plant seemed to 

 demon.^trate the fact that it had a 



