Vol. LXI. No. 2739. 
NEW YORK, JULY 26, 1902. 
*1 PER YEAR 
THE “CLARK” PLAN OF SEEDING GRASS 
Success as Well as Failure. 
Having called for reports from those who have followed 
the so-called “Clark” method of grass seeding we in¬ 
tend to print all sides of the matter. The earliest re¬ 
ports do not indicate any great success. The “Clark” 
system is practiced by Geo. M. Clark, of Higganum, 
Conn., who has grown tremendous crops of hay. In 
brief, his plan Is to fit the soil in the most thorough 
manner by working it again and again with special tools. 
He uses about twice as much seed as the average farmer 
sows, and seeds alone, with no nurse crop of grain, and 
using heavy dressings of chemical fertilizers. 
Big Success in New Hampshire. 
By saying so much about Clark to the man I was 
working for at the time he gave me permission to 
sow two acres as I would, and keep inside of $100. 
Soil, sand loam. 80 loads of cow manure to the two 
acres, plowed as deep as a No. 2 Yankee plow would 
go. It was harrowed 12 times with Cutaway disk, 
dragged with clod crusher. I sowed seven bushels ot 
seed and harrowed with a diamond-tooth smoother. 
The mixture was as follows: Timothy, Red-top 
and Brown-top, Red clover and White clover. I do 
not remember the proportions. I sowed the middle of 
August, and used eight bags of a well-known special 
potato fertilizer. The result the following year was 
four tons to the acre. Total cost, $26.57 in money. 
The man who has since bought the place has plowed 
thp field because the hay was too fine. f. e. h. 
Bedford, N. H. 
A Puzzle in Connecticut. 
Trusting that many will report success, I find I 
must, in carrying out an old promise, report a flat 
failure in seeding by the Clark method. The seed 
was not sown until late in September, but came up 
nicely and looked well during the Fall and Spring. 
Even the clover lived through the Winter, and prom¬ 
ised well when the snow first went off, but March 
killed it all. The Red-top made no showing this sea¬ 
son, but there is nothing surprising about that, and 
I shall expect to see it next year. There was Timothy 
enough to make a good crop of grass had it grown 
any, but it did not. There are two acres in the piece, 
and had I applied commercial fertilizer to the whole 
I should ‘‘have it in” for the man that sold me the 
fertilizer, but I put $20 worth of bought fertilizer on 
one acre and 20 loads of stable manure on the other, 
and it was an even thing between the two. The piece 
is in the middle of a meadow of 25 or 30 acres. The 
adjoining two acres grew 100 bushels ears of corn per 
acre last year with less than $20 worth of fertilizer 
per acre, sown broadcast, and now has a splendid 
stand of oats and young grass. I put a little short 
of 20 loads of stable manure per acre on with the 
oats and grass seed. Had I not sown oats but grass 
seed alone I feel confident I could have cut more grass 
a little later than the Clark piece gave me, about half 
a ton per acre. If there had not been two little 
patches of grass on the piece I should say that on my 
land plowing was necessary to seed successfully. One 
of these patches was where a pailful of fertilizer that 
we were putting on the corn ground a year ago, was 
sown on the grass to see what it would do. I don’t 
remember that it did anything last year but there was 
grass there this year. In the other case I foddered 
cornstalks on a strip a rod wide across the piece, 
thinking the cornstalks might prevent winterkilling. 
The stalks lay on till the frost was out of the ground 
and then were raked off. The droppings of the cattle 
while eating the stalks made grass on that strip. Had 
I put as heavy a dressing of stable manure on my 
oats this Spring as I put on with the grass seed last 
September I should expect it to lodge, and what is 
puzzling me is to guess what became of my $20 worth 
of fertilizer and the 20 loads of stable manure. Ap¬ 
parently I might just as well have thrown both into 
the Housatonic River. Had I put the manure on the 
meadow in September without harrowing the grass 
roots to death and seeding there would be no puzzle 
about it; 1 should have seen the effect sure, and pos¬ 
sibly I ought not to lose heart yet any more than the 
Hope Farm man does with his Alfalfa. I once bought 
a carload of Canada leached ashes, and never saw 
any benefit from it until some years afterwards, when 
the ground was plowed and stable manure applied. 
Then a man who was working the farm in my absence 
was puzzled to know what made double the crop on 
one-half of a piece that he plowed, and I have had a 
similar experience with ground bone, but I always 
thought stable manure was reliable, and didn’t wait 
BEARING TWIG OF BURBANK PLUM. Fie. 203. 
See Ruralisms, Page 514. 
for something else to come along and give it a boost. 
Connecticut. r. s. iunman. 
Hard to Understand in Massachusetts. 
I seeded a small piece after Clark’s plan in 1900, 
and am much disappointed in results. I do not know 
to what to attribute the lack of success. I will give 
you a history of the case, and perhaps you can sug¬ 
gest the why. The land had been in currants for six 
or seven years, but they did not pay, and in 1900, 
after picking the currants, I pulled up the bushes 
(last of July) and worked the ground thoroughly as 
I thought, plowing and then harrowing repeatedly. 1 
sowed a good dressing of fertilizer and it was har¬ 
rowed in very thoroughly. The land was seeded early 
in September, and another light dressing of fertilizer 
applied at that time. The seed was sown very thick¬ 
ly. I tried to follow Mr. Clark’s recommendation as 
to quantity. It was about two weeks after sowing 
before there was wet enough to make the seed start. 
It then came very thickly, but did not make good 
growth. In Spring of 1901 I sowed a light top-dress¬ 
ing of fertilizer. The crop that year was light—not 
much over a ton per acre, and the growth was most¬ 
ly fine and short. In the Fall of 1900 I dressed with 
ashes when seeding in addition to the fertilizer ap¬ 
plied. This last Spring I gave another top-dressing, 
but the crop was light, not much better than last sea¬ 
son, but clover has come in, so near half the crop this 
season is clover. Adjoining this lot is one which was 
in grass in 1900, and after getting the hay from it I 
plowed and reseeded. On this lot not more than half 
as much seed was used as on the lot after Clark’s 
method, and the land was not very thoroughly work¬ 
ed after plowing. The dressing of fertilizer applied 
was less than half as much (1,800 pounds on three 
acres) as was applied on the other lot, yet this lot has 
yielded about double the grass of the lot seeded after 
Clark’s method. I don’t wish you to think I attribute 
the poor success on the one lot to Clark’s plan of 
seeding, for I do not, but I do not know where to lay 
the blame. I have thought it might be the condition 
of the soil. After several years of currant culture 
the soil had but little humus, or at least was very 
fine and compact, but it does seem as though grass 
ought to have grown better than it did. Perhaps so 
much working of soil already fine was a damage. I 
once had an experience equally puzzling in the use 
of manure. On a strip of about 114 acre in a seven- 
acre lot I applied about six cords of apparently good 
manure. The field was planted to potatoes, and where 
the manure was put (spread) I used about one-half 
ton per acre of fertilizer. On the adjoining portion 
of the field I used between 1,300 and 1,400 pounds of 
the same fertilizer, all in drill. After the potatoes 
were dug the whole field was seeded to grass, all re¬ 
ceiving the same dressing and treatment. I never 
could tell by the growth of potatoes or grass where 
the manure was put. I have since concluded that 
acidity of soil was responsible for the trouble, as the 
grass would not grow well in any of the field, but 
since I have given two successive dressings of about 
one ton per acre each year I am getting very heavy 
crops of hay—nearly three tons per acre. I may some 
time find a satisfactory explanation of the behavior 
of the currant bush lot. m. m. 
Massachusetts. 
FARMING IN THE RED RI\/ER VALLEY. 
Fertility; How Maintained. 
Part X. 
Periiaps the question of maintaining fertility gives 
the farmers of the Northwest less concern, at the 
present time, than any other section of the country. 
However, crops on old land, that which has been 
cropped continually with wheat for 10, 15 or even 20 
years, are getting so light that something must be 
done to regain its lost fertility. Summer fallowing is 
the primary method of maintaining fertility in the 
Valley, and a quarter section of the farm that was 
quite badly run down, was treated in this way three 
years ago. The ground was left unplowed from the 
previous Fall and then plowed about four inches deep 
during July. At this time wild oats, mustard and rose 
bushes stood two feet high over the entire field. After 
plowing, the field was thoroughly harrowed and then 
pastured with sheep to keep down all small weeds un¬ 
til frost. This field then raised two crops of as fine 
wheat as we ever had on the farm. In our plan of 
rotating crops potatoes and corn are always followed 
by wheat, and after three or four crops of wheat have 
been grown, the land is either seeded to some other 
grain, seeded to grass or planted to potatoes again. 
Flax is a crop that is usually sown on sod (it tames 
it much sooner tnan wheat), or on land that is low in 
