ALFALFA IN GROP ROTATION. 
With some men alfalfa is the best money crop 
that can be grown. Naturally these men desire to 
keep their land continuously in alfalfa. They prac- 
tice something like the following system: After the 
last crop of hay is cut in the fall the alfalfa stubble 
is plowed deeply and fitted and sown back to alfalfa 
in the spring. Or the alfalfa is mown off in May 
or early June, again in July, and is at once broken 
and sown to alfalfa in late July or early August. In 
some parts of Maryland alfalfa winters well the first 
year but kills the second winter. Thus they sow it 
each year and declare that no crop pays so well as 
forage for dairy cows. 
There may doubtless be instances where this is 
good praetice for a time. It is true, nevertheless, 
that soils are better off to have a change of crops 
now and then, and crops are certainly better for 
fresh soils. While alfalfa is a soil enricher in the 
sense of adding stores of nitrogen it is a soil deplet- 
er so far as phosphorus and potash and lime go. 
More than that, there are hidden influences that we 
do not understand that make soils unfriendly to 
plants that have grown in them too long. It is not- 
able that some of the very oldest books on agricul- 
ture in referring to alfalfa say: ‘‘It endures for 
many years and afterward may be plowed up and 
the land sown to corn. Land should not be sown 
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