231 

 DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Hayes: "I have had quite a little experience with grasses 

 in Iowa in about this latitude, and I want to say a little about 

 orchard grass, tall oat or meadow grass and the rye grass. The 

 question with those three grasses is, can we afford to pay the 

 high prices for the seed that we must pay for them in preference 

 to timothy, red clover and our commoner grasses. I firmly 

 believe that we cannot do it. Mr. Boyd said at Manchester he 

 found it necessary to sow three bushels of seed to the acre. We 

 will suppose, for instance, that he wishes them in rotation, he 

 must pay at least $1.50, probably $2.00 per bushel for his seed 

 and that makes $6.00 for the seed, and if he sows some clover 

 there Will be a little additional expense. Now, we all know that 

 a mixture of timothy and red clover costs very little for seed 

 and the same with blue grass. If we want permanent pastures 

 blue grass should be sowed and we should sow with it some 

 timothy and some clover, to protect it for the first year or two 

 until the blue grass gets a start. It takes at least three years to 

 get hold of the soil; it spreads entirely by underground root 

 stalks. The branches of all these grasses come out at the joints 

 underneath the midway of the leaf. If you sow your blue grass 

 and clover for the permanent pasture about the time your blue 

 grass is started the clover is liable to kill out, owing to the con- 

 dition of the climate and so on. As to the orchard and tall oat 

 grass, if we could get the seed cheaply and could get a stand 

 readily, which we cannot do, we could produce probably 

 slightly better crops than with timothy, but the cost of the seed 

 is too great. The farmers look the whole thing over and think 

 that that is the thing they would like to do, but when they go 

 to buy the seed they are stumped. It might pay to sow oat 

 grass with blue grass; if sowed in the spring it comes up very 

 quickly and will make a good deal of pasture, probably more 

 the first year than red clover. The greatest question of the 

 grasses is how to mix them, when to sow them, how to form 

 our pastures with a few of the best grasses? We do need to 



