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 must 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 
‘‘erawfishy’’ 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 
eulture. 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- 
