FERTILIZING ALFALFA FIELDS 215 
spread; it will prove serviceable both in protecting 
the plants and in furnishing plant-food that may 
be well distributed in the soil by fall and winter 
rains. 
Second and succeeding years, a top-dressing is 
recommended of eight to ten tons of manure, and 
an application of fertilizers supplying about twenty 
pounds of available phosphoric acid and twenty- 
five pounds of potash, which may preferably be 
obtained from 150 pounds of acid phosphate and 
fifty pounds of muriate of potash per acre. The 
fertilizers may be broadcasted, preferably after the 
first cutting in spring, or previous to the last cut- 
ting in fall, and the manure applied as recom- 
mended for the first year. 
In regions where alfalfa is new, the land should 
be inoculated. There is but one practical way to 
do this,—by the use of soil from an established 
alfalfa field, or from a patch of sweet clover 
(melilotus). The same bacteria inhabit each of 
these plants. It does not matter how much soil 
is used, so long as it is fine and is scattered over 
the field and harrowed in before sunlight destroys 
the germs. As little as 200 pounds will inoculate 
an acre, and a ton of earth has been used with 
good results. Even and thorough distribution of the 
inoculated soil is readily accomplished by sowing it 
on the land just after plowing, the tillage required 
in seeding ensuring the complete distribution. 
