SEEDING AND CUTTING. 219 



While it is true that this gives a good many more 

 plants than are needed, yet these will crowd each 

 other out in time and about enough will survive to 

 make an ideal stand. An extra alfalfa plant is 

 simply a weed in the field, but it is the best weed 

 that can be selected, and it undoubtedly deters the 

 growth of other weeds to a greater or less extent. 



Thick Fall Seeding Wrong. — Men have sown as 

 much as 40 pounds of seed to the acre in the fall. 

 This is a serious error. The plants standing so thick- 

 ly, more than 200 of them to the square foot, so 

 crowd each other that they can not grow as they 

 ought, and so no root gets strong as it should before 

 the winter sets in. The result is that the frost lifts 

 and destroys a large percentage of them all. "With 

 half the seed sown and stronger plants more would 

 have been alive in the spring. 



Curiously enough the better the land is adapted to 

 alfalfa growing the fewer plants an acre of it will 

 carry. I have seen wonderful alfalfa meadows with 

 no more than 40,000 or 50,000 plants to the acre. 

 Each root, however, had many stools and stems, 

 a hundred perhaps or more from the one root. 



Sowing the Seed. — If the seed is sown on freshly 

 harrowed land it is best. The seedbed should be 

 firm, well worked down, yet freshly stirred. Thus 

 the seed stick wherever they happen to strike and do 

 not roll around or get in bunches. The manner of 

 distribution is not very essential. Perhaps the most 

 even distribution is had by the wheelbarrow seeder. 

 Any of the commercial seed sowers on the market 



