64 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
The number of the lucerne plants should be less than those of 
saintfoin to an acre, because they grow much larger in this way 
of management, and each occupies a greater space of ground, and 
produces a larger quantity of hay. 
The quick growth of this plant requires that it should have 
large supplies of nourishment, and good room to grow in; and it 
is better in all things of this kind to err in setting the plants too 
far distant, than in setting them too near. 
The most fatal diseases incident to lucerne are starving and 
smothering; for this reason good cultivation is necessary to it, 
and the often turning the earth with the hoe all about it. By 
this means, a plant that in the common way of sowing would not 
have been more than eight or nine inches high, will be four or 
five feet, and will spread every way so as to produce a quantity 
of hay, more like the cutting of a shrub than a plant. 
The plants should stand at five inches distance in single rows, 
and the intervals between these rows must be left wide enough 
for the use of the hoe plough, (if managed according to the 
horse-hoe husbandry); but if hand hoed, one foot between the 
rows will do: for which I will refer you to my experiments on 
fallow crops, where you will find that by this method I had at 
the rate of four tun lucerne hay per acre. But lucerne sown in 
drills so near-will in a few years meet in the rows, which will 
hinder the mould heing stirred, when it will starve for want of 
nourishment, and thereby wear out. 
Lucerne is of much quicker growth than saintfoin, or any 
other grass. I have cut it four times in a season, whereas the 
others are seldom cut above twice. 
Lucerne is to be made into hay, the same as saintfoin or’clover; 
but this must be observed, that it is always to be cut just before 
it comes to flower. It is a fine food, if cut for the cattle green, 
it is so sweet and full of nourishment but it must be kept clean 
from natural grass, as that soon choaks and kills it. 
Of the introduction of alfalfa into the Pacific coast 
region we have less recorded. Naturally the people 
of Spanish blood, settling California from Mexico, 
brought their favorite farm seeds with them, seeds 
of their best suited farm crops; among these was 
alfalfa. Not much alfalfa was grown in California 
by the Spanish colonists, enough probably to give 
them credit for the introduction there, as they cer- 
