142 ALFALFA FARMING IN AMERICA. 
Many needless failures in attempts to grow alfalfa 
have resulted in eastern states. Alfalfa need not be 
a hard plant to establish. It is hardier than red 
clover. It withstands any drouth. It withstands 
cold better than any other clover. In some regions 
alfalfa seems native to the soil. In other regions 
all the nursing in the world fails to establish it. Why 
is this difference? 
All natural alfalfa countries have the soil filled 
with carbonate of lime. There may also be other 
alkalies in it, and sometimes injurious alkalies, but 
carbonate of lime is the useful thing found. Wherever 
the soil is well stored with carbonate of lime alfalfa 
grows like a weed, if other conditions are good. 
Where the soil is acid no amount of manure will 
keep alfalfa alive very long. 
Carbonate of lime is the sort that God put in the 
soil when He made it. Burned lime is man’s at- 
tempt at improvement. Burned lime may help and 
may harm. Carbonate of lime, that is, raw ground 
limestone, never harms soil. It cannot harm soil, 
use it as freely as you like. One could put on 50 
tons to the acre and do the soil no injury. It would 
merely lie in the soil inert till it was required. Car- 
bonate of lime is needed to make the bacteria of 
alfalfa thrive. It is needed to free the soil from 
poisons that destroy both bacteria and alfalfa. Car- 
bonate of lime stops waste of fertility, makes vege- 
table matter into humus, arrests fleeing nitrogen. 
Ground limestone will make alfalfa grow without 
fail, if a few other easily met conditions are com- 
