132 AtPALFA 



derlaid with gravel subsoil are good for alfalfa. Slopes 

 on which the winter snows lie best' are good fields, 

 lyocations to be avoided are such as hold water too 

 near the surface or on the surface, especially as the 

 ground is freezing in the fall. Preparation should be 

 thorough; alfalfa (to be irrigated) should never be 

 sown until the soil is perfedlly mellowed by cultiva- 

 tion, and leveled by cutting off the knolls and ridges 

 and filling the depressions — a bringing up of the sur- 

 face of the soil to a general plane. This is to facilitate 

 irrigation (and it does not matter if the irrigation be 

 natural or artificial, as the necessity is even greater to 

 distribute rainfall evenly than artificially applied 

 water) and harvesting. 



' ' When one sows an alfalfa meadow it should be 

 remembered that many years are likely to elapse before 

 it is to be plowed up; that twice or thrice each season 

 expensive machinery is likely to traverse it, and that 

 rough land is destrudlive to all machinery. 



' ' In Montana, under irrigation, I would seed to 

 barley. In Kansas I would have clean, straight alfalfa 

 on the land and no other crop. A ' nurse-crop ' is a 

 misnomer; a good nurse does not take the food and 

 drink out of the mouth of the helpless charge, and that 

 is what is done when the so-called 'nurse-crop' is 

 sown with the legumes. On a rich soil, and with irri- 

 gation, we get in Montana a fine stand with barley, 

 supplying two irrigations to the growing crop of grain, 

 and follow the harvest, from August loth to September 

 I St, with a third irrigation. Thus treated the alfalfa 

 will make a stubble-growth of twelve inches by freez- 

 ing-up time, and gives fine pasturage. We sow broad- 

 cast with a hand-seeder, from May ist to 15th, fifteen 



