VOL. LVIII— NO. I 



HAMILTON, ILL., JANUARY, 1918 



MONTHLY, $1.00 A YFAR 



SWEET CLOVER AS A FARM CROP 



Items of Interest About a Plant Which Was Formerly Regarded as a Weed, 



Now Generally Grown for Forage— Photographs From 



U. S. Department of Agriculture 



WHEN our older readers were 

 beginners in the beekeeping 

 business it was a popular 

 thing for the beekeepers to buy sweet 

 clover seed and stealthily sow it 

 along the roadsides after night. So 

 general was this practice, that, when- 

 ever the plant appeared in a new lo- 

 cality, it was generally charged up 

 to the beekeepers living near by, and 

 they were very often guilty of having 

 sown it. So great was the prejudice 

 against the plant that much ill feel- 

 ing developed in some places because 

 / of it. It even went so far that in 

 some States it was placed on the list 

 of noxious weeds and its eradication 

 required by law. When Frank Co- 

 verdale, the well-known Iowa farmer 

 who has done so much to popularize 

 sweet clover, first sowed it in his 

 own fields, neighbors called on the 

 county attorney to enquire whether 

 he could not be prosecuted for sow- 

 ing weed seed. For a generation the 

 beekeepers kept up the fight, and 

 constantly preached that sweet clover 

 was not a weed, but a valuable forage 

 plant. It remained for men like 

 Coverdale, who were both beekeep- 

 ers and farmers, to prove the asser- 

 tion and convince an unwilling pub- 

 lic, by making as much profit from 

 sweet clover pasture or forage as the 

 neighbors could make from other 

 farm crops. 



It was on poor lands which had 



been worn out by bad tillage, that the 



plant made the best showing. When 



' lands which had been lying idle, be- 



1 cause no other crop could be raised 



I profitably, were made to produce 



good yields of milk, butter and beef 



from sweet clover, the neighbors 



i were inclined to give it a trial on 



their own poor lands. The change in 



sentiment has been very marked dur- 

 ing the past five years, and now the 

 demand for sweet clover seed is 

 greater than the supply, and will con- 

 tinue so for several years, since the 

 area where it is being grown is con- 

 stantly being enlarged There are 

 large areas where sweet clover is 

 grown generally as a farm crop in 

 Kentucky, Nebraska and Kansas, and 

 to a lesser extent in many other 

 States. The increased acreage of this 

 plant will double the possibilities of 

 honey production in most any lo- 

 cality, and, in numerous instances, 

 will treble and quadruple it, some- 

 times twice over. In the early years 

 of his experience, Coverdale kept 

 bees in several out-apiaries, so that 

 much travel back and forth was nec- 



essary. Since sweet clover has be- 

 come so generally grown in his lo- 

 cality, he is able to keeo three hun- 

 dred colonies in one yard in his or- 

 chard, where they are under his im- 

 mediate care at any and all times. 

 After traveling over much of the cen- 

 tral west, it has become apparent that 

 within a few years the beekeeping 

 possibilities of parts of Kansas, Ne- 

 braska and South Dakota, will be al- 

 most inexhaustible because of the 

 increase of this plant. 



Last spring, on visiting Falmouth, 

 Ky., I was amazed at the stories they 

 told of what sweet clover had done 

 for that region. One of the pioneer 

 growers was E. E. Barton, and his ex- 

 perience with it sounded like a fairy 

 tale. Mr. Barton said that following 



THE SWEET CLOVER LEAF 



