142 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



Many needless failures in attempts to grow alfalfa 

 have resulted in eastern states. Alfalfa need not be 

 a hard plant to establish. It is hardier than red 

 clover. It withstands any drouth. It withstands 

 cold better than any other clover. In some regions 

 alfalfa seems native to the soil. In other regions 

 all the nursing in the world fails to establish it. Why 

 is this difference? 



All natural alfalfa countries have the soil filled 

 with carbonate of lime. There may also be other 

 alkalies in it, and sometimes injurious alkalies, but 

 carbonate of lime is the useful thing found. Wherever 

 the soil is well stored with carbonate of lime alfalfa 

 grows like a weed, if other conditions are good. 

 Where the soil is acid no amount of manure will 

 keep alfalfa alive very long. 



Carbonate of lime is the sort that God put in the 

 soil when He made it. Burned lime is man's at- 

 tempt at improvement. Burned lime may help and 

 may harm. Carbonate of lime, that is, raw ground 

 limestone, never harms soil. It cannot harm soil, 

 use it as freely as you like. One could put on 50 

 tons to the acre and do the soil no injury. It would 

 merely lie in the soil inert till it was required. Car- 

 bonate of lime is needed to make the bacteria of 

 alfalfa thrive. It is needed to free the soil from 

 poisons that destroy both bacteria and alfalfa. Car- 

 bonate of lime stops waste of fertility, makes vege- 

 table matter into humus, arrests fleeing nitrogen. 



Ground limestone will make alfalfa grow without 

 fail, if a few other easily met conditions are com- 



