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 
