102 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 



There is no mystery about getting a stand of alfalfa. 

 To make that stand succeed once you get it, there's 

 the rub, especially in the eastern states. 



Drainage. — What are the requirements of the 

 alfalfa plant as regards soil? 



First, it likes soil to be dry, dry even in a wet 

 time. That is, it ought to be a soil that will not fill 

 up with water and remain waterlogged for many 

 days. Alfalfa loves moisture too, but it mus't have 

 moisture and air in the soil at the same time. Thus 

 it likes well drained loams, alluvial soil along rivers 

 or creeks (such lands are usually the best drained) 

 or even gravelly soils, so they have also fertility. If 

 naturally well drained lands are not on your farm 

 then you can make the land dry with tiles. It is 

 entirely practicable to drain land naturally wet and 

 "crawfishy" with tiles so 'that it will grow alfalfa 

 well. The writer has tested this on "Woodland Farm 

 where with his brothers he has laid many miles of 

 tile underdrains. In truth not much of Woodland 

 Farm would grow alfalfa before it was under- 

 drained. Now about the heaviest and surest crops 

 grow on land once too wet for alfalfa to grow at all. 



Drainage, that is the very first essential in alfalfa 

 culture. Let that truth sink in deep. Do not sow al- 

 falfa on a marsh, nor on a waterlogged clay that 

 will stand full of water half the year. An occasional 

 submergence by the overflowing of a stream may do 

 no harm, will do no harm if the submergence comes 

 in cold weather, or if the water is moving. An over- 

 flow of even a week's duration, if the water is mov- 



