leio. 
THE RURAb NEW-YORKER 
787 
TWO SIDES TO SWEET CLOVER. 
A Panacea for Worn Soil. • 
The picture shown at Fig. 337 was taken July 3 
from a field that has been sown to Sweet clover two 
years. This is the second season's growth, and is is 
in full bloom. This piece of ground, three years ago, 
was a poor, washed and badly galled one. There 
was not a blade of Blue grass to be seen, now there 
is a fine stand of it. With the Sweet clover it is one 
of the finest pastures we have. The man is standing 
in the pasture where it has been grazed; just beyond 
the fence is a field grown for seed, which will yield 
at the rate of about 12 bushels per acre. The time 
for harvesting the Sweet clover seed crop will soon 
be here. All who are so fortunate as to have the seed 
growing near them, along the highway or in out-of- 
the-way places, where it first gets the start in some 
localities, should gather some of the seed and sow 
it on some of their poorest soil and watch it build 
up. My object in this article is not to try to make 
everybody who reads it, think it is the "only thing” 
but to give them a few points in harvesting the seed. 
The blossoming period with Sweet clover is from 
six to eight weeks; if very seasonable, a little longer, 
if very dry a little shorter. The first seed that sets 
will have fallen off by the time the main crop is 
ready to harvest. When the crop is ready to harvest 
there will be some bloom yet on the plant. The 
plants should be cut with care and made into small, 
loose bundles. These should be loosely shocked, and 
should remain so until the seed and stems become 
thoroughly dried out. 
It is very essential that 
the seed be kept from 
heating, as the germin¬ 
ating power is soon de¬ 
stroyed if the seed is 
piled in large piles be¬ 
fore it is well dried out. 
Sweet clover may be 
thrashed or hulled on a 
regular clover huller, but 
as a general thing the 
seed is gathered in the 
chaff or hull and left 
thus. I think that the 
seed retains its weight 
better when left in the 
hull, and is not as liable 
to heat as when hulled 
and sacked. On the ma¬ 
ture plant the leaves dry 
up, and when handled 
dry they crumble as into 
dust. In hauling in the 
bundles, (which should 
be done just when you 
are ready to get out the 
seed) the wagon body or 
hay frame should be cov¬ 
ered with a tarpaulin or 
heavy cloth, which will 
save much of the best 
seed. The seed may be 
flailed out on a tight 
floor, and then run 
through a fanning mill 
which will clean out all dust and broken leaves. The 
seed should then be spread out thinly and should 
remain so, until thoroughly dried out. 
TIME FOR SOWING.—There is quite a difference 
in opinion as to the time that Sweet clover should 
be sown. My experience and a close observation leads 
me to believe that the best time is the Fall season. 
It is nature’s method to scatter seeds of plants by the 
birds, the wind and other sources, just as soon as 
they are well matured. For pasture or meadow, about 
25 pounds of the seed in the hull, or 20 pounds of 
hulled seed per acre is used. When sown for a seed 
crop, half the above amounts are sufficient,.as we want 
large and well-developed plants to mature good seed. 
Sweet clover is not in a class of its own, when it comes 
to planting the seed, but it is when it comes to the point 
of a soil restorer. It gives best results when sown in a 
well-prepared seed bed. One great advantage Sweet 
clover has over a great many crops, is that it will 
* keep in check almost all of the noxious weeds, with 
which we are troubled. Like buckwheat, it is a rapid 
and rank grower and soon covers the ground before 
any other growth can get a start. The variety shown 
in the picture is Melilotus alba, the white flowering 
variety. There is a yellow-flowering variety that is 
an earlier bloomer, has much finer cut foliage and 
the blossoming period does not last so long as the 
white. By some seedsmen Sweet clover is catalogued 
as Bokhara or Bee clover. It is a fine thing for bees, 
as the flowers secrete a fine quality of nectar and large 
amounts of it. J. w. griffin. 
Kentucky. 
SWEET CLOVER NOT FOR POOR LAND. 
Experience in New York State. 
It is a great mistake to advise the growing of Sweet 
clover on poor land. I have read many articles in 
The R. N.-Y. in regard to the growing of Alfalfa, and 
I well remember the stress laid on the importance 
of not trying to raise Alfalfa on poor land, and calling 
attention to the mistaken idea people had that it could 
be used to bring up poor land. That was a very 
important step toward the successful growing of Al¬ 
falfa, I believe, when that idea was thoroughly im¬ 
pressed upon the minds of farmers trying to- grow this 
crop, but there are still plenty of people to-day who. know 
no more about Alfalfa than some of the people who 
are writing about it know about Sweet clover, who 
advise using Alfalfa to bring up poor land. Only 
a few days ago a large dairyman in visiting us, as he 
walked over the nice, loose, freshly plowed land, fre¬ 
quently called attention to how well Alfalfa would do 
in such soil, as he judged by its appearance; in fact, 
rather thinking it strange we did not have a lot of it, 
or giving that impression from his remarks. Another 
neighbor who was here some time ago said he had a 
poor piece of land on the back part of his place he 
wanted to sow to Alfalfa to bring it up; and I over¬ 
heard a conversation on the train last Winter, between 
a farmer and a friend, who was advising him to sow 
Alfalfa on a piece of land he referred to as being poor, 
as it was a great crop to make the land rich. Now, 
people who know anything about growing Alfalfa 
know that such ideas are entirely mistaken ones, and 
yet I believe that it is just as much a mistake to 
recommend the use of Sweet clover for a similar 
purpose, so far as many sections of the country are 
concerned. There is the mistake; a man may try 
a crop on his land and find it a success and without 
stopping to consider that conditions are not alike 
all over the country, he writes articles for different 
papers, recommending the growing of a certain crop, 
as has been the case with the recommending of Sweet 
clover as a crop for poor land. It has only been a few 
months, less than a year I believe, since I saw the 
first stir made by articles on Sweet clover. The fact 
that Sweet clover will grow on what seems to be 
poor land in Kentucky, is no reason that it will grow 
on what we know is poor land in New York State, 
nor is what one man considers poor land, as poor as 
some other man’s poor land. The surprising growth of 
Sweet clover on railway embankments and land where 
new streets are being cut gives an erroneous idea of the 
requirements of the plant. 
As one rides along the road he secs Sweet clover 
growing under conditions that are surprising; in fact, 
it seems that no other, or indeed, any plant could 
make such a growth under such conditions, and it 
is a very natural theory to suppose that it would be 
valuable to grow on poor land; the fact that it is a 
legume makes it all the more interesting. The more 
one sees of it the more he is impressed with it. The 
one thing that we do not see or take into considera¬ 
tion is that, in many instances, this Sweet clover is 
growing where other plants of Sweet clover had 
lived and died and the surroundings are congenial, 
but take the seed from those same strong plants of 
Sweet clover, in some cases five or seven feet high, 
and sow those seeds on what seems to be far better 
land and more favorable conditions, and the result 
is much the same as moving a farmer from what 
would seem to some of our city friends as very un¬ 
comfortable or unpleasant surroundings (but con¬ 
genial to the farmer), to the life of a town or city. 
Land may be very poor indeed, and yet the right con¬ 
ditions for the growth of a plant may be there, and 
it would not be “poor” to that plant. That is where 
I was badly fooled with Sweet clover. We needed a 
legume that would grow in poor land, and to illustrate 
what is referred to as poor land here, will say that this 
has been a great potato section for years. Farmers 
have grown rich in some instances growing potatoes, 
others have made money, but the Lord help the farms, 
for they need it. This particular farm is no exception, 
as it was no worse when we got hold of it than hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of acres of land all through this 
part of the country, where it is the practice to plow 
under a sod that has been mowed and pastured until 
it is not worth mowing again, plant potatoes, with 
sometimes only 100 to 200 pounds of fertilizer per 
acre, or none, the land left bare all Winter, even burn¬ 
ing the potato tops; the next year oats, followed by 
rye and again seeded to Timothy, or there may at 
times be a crop of corn following potatoes, to be fol¬ 
lowed by oats and rye. In many cases, as was the 
case with this farm for years, very little stock is kept 
and the land finally gets very poor. One old neighbor 
expressed it that “it squeaks when you walk over it.” 
There are, of course, many exceptions, where the land 
is kept up by various 
methods, but this illus¬ 
trates the conditions un¬ 
der which we tried and 
failed some years ago 
with both Alfalfa and 
Sweet clover, on land 
that might properly be 
called poor, but with 
heavy applications of 
manure we can grow 
good Alfalfa, and after 
Sweet clover gets a 
start, it grows rank and 
thick in spots. 
I had been watching 
Sweet clover and was in¬ 
terested in its value for 
bringing up poor land, 
and was advised by “au¬ 
thorities” to try it. That 
Fall we gathered and 
thrashed a large quan¬ 
tity of seed, and sowed 
it nearly all over the 
farm, excepting the tim¬ 
ber. The next Spring 
millions of little Sweet 
clover plants came up, 
and the prospects were 
encouraging for awhile, 
as many another one has 
felt when he saw his 
Alfalfa come up nice and 
thick at the start, only to 
grow less and less. It 
established itself in a few spots and spreads from 
there, getting ranker each year, but spreads slowly. 
There is no question about the value of Sweet clover, 
but there is a very serious doubt about its being adapted 
to bringing up poor land, as it has been so much recom¬ 
mended for of late. It would be far safer to state 
plainly the facts in the matter, that it is often very 
difficult to get it started, that the growth is very poor 
and weak on very poor land, that even after it does 
get a start in a small way the growth is comparatively 
small for a few years. There are conditions under 
which these remarks will not apply, but it is a great 
mistake for a man to go into Sweet clover expecting 
to plant it and get a crop of seed or a big growth in a 
short time to plow under, on land that is poor and thin. 
Livingston Co., N. Y. isaac c. Rogers. 
We have given several accounts of the process of 
taking nitrogen directly from the air. A strong elec¬ 
tric current is needed to do this, and the quantity of 
agricultural nitrogen obtained in this way will before 
long affect our fertilizer bills. It is now reported that 
the Swedes are using electricity to utilize the phos¬ 
phoric acid in a low grade phosphate rock. If this is 
true, we shall have in time a new “revolution” of the 
fertilizer industry. Experts at the United States De¬ 
partment of Agriculture insist that it is quite possible 
to use a strong electric current in making the potash 
in several of our common rocks available. In fact we 
seem to have hardly begun to make use of electricity 
for agricultural purposes. Our farms may yet be fed 
with all the needed elements through the power ob¬ 
tained from our mountain streams. 
IN A KENTUCKY SWEET CLOVER FIELD. Fig. 337. 
