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be dissolved by rain-water or the plant juices they are as impotent to sup- 

 port plant life as the uncrumbled surface of a desert rock. The food 

 must be prepared for plants just as the corn and wheat must be shucked 

 or threshed, ground and baked for the use of man. Clover acts as the 

 miller and baker for other crops. It prepares the food so that it becomes 

 available and digestible by them. 



SOILS ADAPTED TO ITS GROWTH Red clover is a biennial 

 plant, which under judicious tillage, may be made practically a perennial, 

 and is specially adapted to calcareous or limy soils; but it will grow well 

 upon sandy soils, when a "catch" is secured, by the application of a top- 

 dressing of gypsum or barnyard manure. I have seen it growing with 

 vigor upon the feldspathic soils of Johnson county, upon the sandstone 

 soils of the Cumberland table-land, and upon the sandy loams of West 

 Tennessee; but it finds a more congenial soil in the clayey and limy lands 

 of the valley of East Tennessee, or on the red soils of the Highland Rim, 

 and grows most luxuriantly on the limestone loams of the Central Basin. 

 But the deep, black, porous soils of this division are not suited physically 

 for the growing of clover. Such soils become very dry in summer and 

 open in great cracks or fissures. The clover grows well enough at first 

 but is apt to be killed by the dry, hot weather of summer. The clayey 

 lands of West Tennessee, containing nodules of calcareous matter, have 

 no superior for the production of clover. It often grows upon these lands 

 from four to five feet in height, and when it falls forms a mat of great 

 density and thickness. As much as four tons of clover hay have been 

 taken from a single acre. There is also a soil derived from the Dyestone 

 or Clinton formation in East Tennessee that grows clover with surpris- 

 ing luxuriance. On such soils in McMinn county, the ordinary red 

 clover sometimes grows six feet in height. Probably three-fourths of the 

 lands in Tennessee will grow clover remuneratively, and of the soils that 

 will not a large portion are included in the old gullied fields that con- 

 stitute the shame and mark the shiftlessness of too many farmers. It 

 may be set down as an infallible rule in the State of Tennessee that good 

 farming and abundant clovering go together. 



SOWING CLOVER Clover may be sown in Tennessee upon 

 wheat, rye or oat fields, or alone. Instances have been reported where a 

 splendid stand was obtained by sowing after cultivators in the last work- 

 ing of corn in July. This is unusual however. So is fall sowing. The 

 best time to sow is from the first of January until the first of April. If 

 sown in January or February, the seed ought to be sown upon snow. 

 This is not only convenient in enabling one to distribute the seed evenly 

 over the land, but the gradual melting of the snow, and the slight freezes, 

 bury the seed just deep enough to insure rapid germination when the 

 warm days of March come on. For the same reason, if sown in March, 

 the seed ought to be sown when the ground is slightly crusted by a 

 freeze. If the sowing is deferred until too late for frosty nights, the 

 land should be well harrowed and the seed sown immediately after the 

 harrow. Upon land seeded to wheat, this harrowing will not only serve 

 to secure a good stand of clover, but will add greatly to the yield of the 

 wheat. It will hasten germination and cause a larger proportion of seed 



