SUMMARY OF ALFALFA SOWING. 501 
and 2 feet high, connecting the deep furrows be. 
tween the beds with our open ditches, we might grow 
alfalfa, I hoped. It was impossible to do this work 
before the land became thoroughly dry, since plows 
would not scour in the half-dried clay. In July 
came opportunity: the land was dry. With large 
d_se plows heavily weighted and drawn by six mules 
we broke the land, turning it up into beds 2 rods 
wide. The furrows I cleaned out with a road ma- 
chine. With a great deal of labor I made these beds 
nicely rounded and smooth, like the best turnpikes. 
Rains came and the clods, nearly as hard as stone, 
dissolved and we got a seedbed. 
On part of the field we put a heavy application 
of manure from the old stable; on another part I 
used phosphate fertilizers liberally. In October I 
sowed the seed. Inoculation is natural in the buck- 
shot soils. The result was beautiful, nearly perfect 
alfalfa. Seldom have I seen better anywhere in the 
world, although I have seen it grow taller on some 
soils. The astonishing thing was that we could never 
trace the line where we had put the manure, nor 
find any evidence of the other fertilizers. 
This was one place where alfalfa through its bac- 
teria received from the air all the nitrogen that it 
needed. A marvelous thing was that the alfalfa 
grew as vigorously in the bottom of our dead furrow, 
where the soil had been removed to a depth of about 
* 18”, as it did anywhere, and inoculation even there 
was immediate. Naturally, after a time the best al- 
falfa was on the ridges, as the furrows were slowly 
emptied after hard rains. 
