No. 4.] ALFALFA FOR NEW ENGLAND. U7 



of you will be getting much more. But when we have learned 

 how to grow alfalfa, we shall have learned that the seed is very, 

 very small, and that for some weeks the little alfalfa plant is 

 a very delicate little thing. That means that it cannot hold 

 its own against many of the weeds. You can kill the weeds by 

 disking and plowing, by cultivating and hoeing before the al- 

 falfa is planted on the ground. But once the alfalfa is planted, 

 you are doomed to partial failure if you have sown the seed 

 on sn-ound infested with weeds. You must sow alfalfa on a 

 clean seed bed in order to succeed well. 



The seed bed should be hard. I would hardly expect to 

 succeed with alfalfa if I plowed the ground just before sowing 

 the seed. I would much prefer disking to plowing before seed- 

 ing. Where alfalfa is seeded in August, following wheat or 

 oats, disking gives better results than plowing. But wo do not 

 disk to save time. We must disk and disk until it takes as 

 much time as it would to plow. However, the disking leaves 

 a hard seed bed underneath, it gives us a garden mulch on 

 top, and it leaves the stubble on the surface to act as a partial 

 shade and to keep the soil from washing. Plowing, especially 

 after a coat of manure or heavy coat of stubble is plowed under, 

 causes the soil to dry out too rapidly and too deeply. Even 

 oats, with a seed much larger than the little alfalfa seed, fre- 

 quently do better on disked ground than on plowed ground. 

 But if there are weeds, if the ground has been in oats, say, and 

 the oats have been cut early for haj^, then the ground may be 

 plowed, the deeper the better, and the weeds thoroughly killed. 

 After the plowing the ground should be rolled, disked and har- 

 rowed frequently to germinate and kill all weed seed and to give 

 a good, hard seed bed underneath, with a clean garden mulch 

 on top. Remember that you are seeding the alfalfa for from 

 three to ten years to come, and it pays to do it well. You can 

 easily reduce your alfalfa hay crop 1 to 2 tons for a number 

 of years to come by not preparing a good seed bed. Think of 

 a man's shortening his yield 2 tons of hay, worth $20 per ton, 

 and that for three to ten years to come, and all of this loss to 

 save a day's labor when preparing a seed bed. The seed bed 

 should be clean enough and soft enough to do for an onion bed. 

 It pays to have a clean, hard seed bed. 



