1910. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
71 
SWEET CLOVER AS A FERTILIZER. 
Sweet clover is fast coining to the front as a soil 
restorer; until the last few years it has been classed 
as a troublesome weed, by many. I have been ex¬ 
perimenting with the different clovers for several 
years as to their value as cured hay, grazing and as 
a crop to turn under as green manure. As cured 
hay. Sweet clover comes second to Alfalfa, which 
is the finest feed we grow in the .Ohio Valley. As a 
pasture, Sweet clover is away ahead; on land that is 
very thin and in which there is very little humus, 
if sown to .Sweet clover and Blue grass there will 
be a good stand of pasture the second season, and if 
pastured lightly a heavy sod is formed rapidly; then 
after the fourth season it may be pastured regularly 
and it will continue to improve. As a green crop 
to turn under, I have not been able to find anything 
near its equal; where sown thickly it makes a very 
heavy growth to turn under, and as this decays and 
is converted into humus the nitrogen-gathering bac¬ 
teria that live on the roots of the clover, release 
the nitrogen that was gathered while the crop was 
growing. The bitter taste that Sweet clover has 
makes against it some, as all stock do not take to it 
readily, but this bitterness caused by a property con¬ 
tained by the Sweet clover known as cumarin pre¬ 
vents the stock that feed on the clover from becoming 
bloated. Hence, anything that makes a good food is 
a good fertilizer. In the two pictures Fig. 20 shows 
SWEET CLOVER PLANT 4 MONTHS OLD. Fig. 20. 
a Sweet clover plant four months old and Fig. 23 a 
root and part of the stub of a two-year-old plant. 
Kentucky. _ j. w. G. 
A SOCIABLE SWARM. 
The accompanying picture, Fig. 22, shows a swarm 
of bees on arm of young man who attempted to hive 
them when they seemed to persist in clustering on 
him. He shook them off repeatedly, and finally called 
for assistance, when another member of the family 
suggested a photograph which was taken. Occasionally 
a swarm will light on an attendant, especially if they 
are of a gentle race and used to being handled. They 
seldom sting in such a case, and in this instance the 
young man did not receive one sting, notwithstanding 
the shaking he gave them in trying to get them to 
enter their new home. In all probability he did not 
dislodge their queen, and when the others found she 
still clung to his sleeve they soon clustered around 
her. They are of pure Italian blood, gentle, good 
honey gatherers, disease resisting, and not excelled. 
New York. _ h. e. gray. 
“MOON PLANTING” TRADITIONS TESTED. 
As is well known, a large percentage of farmers 
“go by the moon” in planting and sowing crops. One 
of the generalizations of their lunar wisdom is that 
anything which grows upward out of the ground 
should be planted or sown under a waxing moon, 
while for anything growing beneath the surface, po¬ 
tatoes for instance, the practice should be the reverse, 
and the seeding should be done when the moon is 
waning. I he writer has a field containing a little less 
than three acres which he purposed last Spring to 
plant with corn, and the idea occurred to him that 
a test of the supposed influence of the moon and of 
some other traditions might be made. The field was 
in sod, and during the preceding Winter had received 
a coating of barnyard manure. The soil is clay loam, 
rather stony, and practically the same all over the 
field. So far as possible, the conditions as to prepa¬ 
ration, fertilization and planting were uniform in 
every respect. The hills were in check rows, 3 y 2 
feet apart each way. 
The first plot on the south side of the field con¬ 
taining 45 rows across it, was planted on May 13. 
The second plot of 45 rows across was planted the 
next day, Friday, both “in the dark of the moon.” 
The remainder of the field, 48 rows, constituting the 
third plot, was planted a week later in the moon’s 
first quarter. Along the highway oil the west side of 
THIS PLOT WAS PiftHTEo 
May 13.in the 
DARK ofthe MG0N 
Mfe lf i iTT i iiHT i T¥ i iWri i ii.. 
TH JS PLOT. PLANTED 
1 0N FRIDAY mv 14 
the dark ^ MOON 
*»S PLOT PLANTED 4 
* MAY SI, IN THE 4^ 
/V^OON’S pif?STQ# 
SIGNS OF A“ MOON PLANTING ” EXPERIMENT. Fig. 21. 
the field, whitened stones marked the boundaries of 
the plots, and placards as shown in Fig. 21 were 
placed near the center of each. The experiment 
created considerable interest and a variety of comment 
and discussion. Divers prophecies were also made. 
Some wise ones said that the first two plots would 
not amount to anything. As the corn came up and 
grew, no appreciable difference "appeared, except that 
the earlier planted corn had a somewhat better start. 
Still some said, “Wait until it ears and matures and 
you will see.” 
Flcrc is the result: Plot No. 1, 54 bushels good, 10 
bushels soft. No. 2, 58 bushels good, 10 bushels soft. 
grape fruit as well as orange, were bending down with 
fruit, why he did not put some sort of mulch about 
the roots of the trees, and be said it did not agree 
with them. He found that it was better even to dig 
the tops of the roots bare and let the sun fairly burn 
them. I f they were covered in so that they would keep 
moist they seemed to sort of suffocate there. So he 
gave them next to nothing over the roots. The roots 
of orange trees are subject to disease unless given 
some special care, and the stem just above the roots 
has a disease of its own also. Oddly enough vegeta¬ 
tion of that sort seems to court direct heat, for the 
planter said that if his trees became diseased at the 
root lib could dig them up, cut out the disease and 
plant them again without their suffering very much, 
in spite of the fact that the orange is an evergreen 
tree, and ought to wilt right down on such exposure, 
according as trees do with us. The Island of New 
Providence, on which Nassau is located, is practically 
a coral rock without soil, except such as is provided 
by the sand that crumbles from it, and yet plants 
grow there in profusion where the rock is not too 
solid. The orange grove of which I speak—though it 
might seem impossible to one who has not seen such 
“agriculture” practiced—was planted after a hole had 
been torn into the sandy rock by a dynamite blast 
for each tree. After that some rough stuff, street 
sweepings and the like, was put in and the trees 
planted. They grew well and did not seem to mind 
their queer foundation. The fruit is of fine quality. 
Erie Co., N. Y. John vv. Chamberlin. 
R. N.-.Y—An orange grower in Porto Rico says be 
will try mulching or grass in order to prevent the 
disastrous washing from heavy rains. 
“WITHOUT BEING STUNG.” Fig. 22. 
No. 3, 57 bushels good, 15 bushels soft. The plot 
planted on “Friday in the dark of the moon” had 
yielded the best results. Aside from any practical 
lessons to be learned from such experiments, they 
afford amusement and add entertainment to the prosi¬ 
ness of much of farm life. d. h. ayres. 
Tompkins Co., N. Y. 
STRANGE TROPICAL FRUIT CULTURE. 
I saw in The R. N.-Y. an inquiry about mulching 
orange trees. I am not an orange planter, but I have 
travelled in countries where they grow, particularly 
in Nassau, which ought to be quite similar to Porto 
Rico, about which the inquiry was made, though the 
vegetation in Nassau depends on so little outside of 
the air that one wonders how it grows at all. I once 
asked a successful orange-grove owner, whose trees, 
The R. N.-Y. has pointed out hundreds of times 
that the nitrogen problem is the most important thing 
connected with buying fertilizers or manures. When 
we are guaranteed a certain amount of potash and 
“available” phosphoric acid, and the chemist finds the 
guarantee correct, we are safe in buying. A mere 
statement of the actual amount of nitrogen will not 
answer, because some forms of nitrogen are worth 
three times as much as others. We should go further 
and find out what the nitrogen comes from. In order 
to do this we must know what the different forms 
represent. We have been criticized for saying that it 
is safest to buy a high-grade fertilizer in order to 
make sure of the nitrogen. Let it be understood 
that when we talk about a “'high-grade” fertilizer we 
mean one containing large proportions of all three 
elements—nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. Sup¬ 
pose we have nine per cent of available phosphoric 
acid and six or more of potash in a fertilizer. In 
order to complete the ton and give four or five per 
cent of nitrogen, it will be absolutely necessary to use 
the forms which we know are available, because they 
are the only ones high enough in that element to give 
the needed amount. There arc, of course, cases 
where only about two per cent of nitrogen will he 
needed. This is usually on soils well filled with 
organic matter and thus, as a rule, no organic nitrogen 
is needed in such mixture. In these cases we should 
want a guarantee that the smaller amount of nitrogen 
was in the form of nitrates. 
*% 
ROOT AND STUB OF SWEET CLOVER SHOWING 
BACTERIA NODULES. Fig. 23. 
