1914. 
1007 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
SPRING OR FALL SEEDING. 
Some Experiences of a Maine Farmer. 
G RASS seeding in late Summer or early Fall 
lias but a short time to make good, and how¬ 
ever even the catch, makes its start the next 
year in soil that is compact and hard, as with us, 
both April and May are likely to be dry and cold. 
Clover cannot be sown with it, as it winter-kills, and 
if added in the Spring, has a cold dry surface al¬ 
ready occupied to start in. Sowing with grain, as 
early in Spring as the ground can be well worked, 
after Fall plowing, I seldom fail to get a good clover 
catch, succeeded by fine Timothy 
and Red-top. 
But, as one man overpastures his 
fields, and proves that all pasturing is 
disastrous, while another pastures 
moderately, and keeps his meadows in 
good condition, so one man sows an 
excess of grain, and both loses his 
catch, and exhausts his land too quick¬ 
ly. Four bushels of oats to the acre 
is too much. I sow about two, and 
seldom fail to have, in the rather tall 
stubble I leave, a splendid growth of 
clover, which so protects the surface 
that the almost daily freezes and 
thaws of March and April have little 
effect upon it. The yield of oats is 
light—25 to 30 bushels—but the grain 
is heavy, and the many fine crops of 
Timothy and Red-top following are 
more profitable than a heavy crop of 
grain, and lighter hay. I sow half a 
bushel per acre of this mixture; a 
bushel of Timothy, 12 pounds of Red 
clover, eight of Alsike, and five of 
Red-top, lightly harrowed, or prefer¬ 
ably put in with a horse rake or a 
plank drag, which also smoothes the 
ground. 
Last year, all conditions being fav¬ 
orable for .Summer seeding a piece of 
land which had been very thoroughly 
worked, I sowed the usual amount of 
seed, including clover, early in August, 
as an experiment, and having in mind 
the reported excellence of the Cow- 
horn turnip, I sowed about half an 
acre of it with this. As the turnips 
came up, they were greedily eaten by 
our poultry, which has free range, and 
only an occasional plant escaped, ex¬ 
cept a strip about 10 feet wide across 
one end, which the hens apparently 
hadn’t time to finish. It was a 
soil there. When the turf was shoveled off he was 
surprised to find very few nodules upon the plant 
roots. This was an eye-opener, and after digging 
in several places in the field, he found that the 
largest number of nodules and lienee the best soil to 
sow for inoculation purposes was found where the 
Alfalfa growth was the sparest. It seems that where 
plant food is scanty, the Alfalfa plant must cooper¬ 
ate with the nodule-forming bacteria in order to ex¬ 
ist, while if the soil is filled with an abundance of 
nitrogenous food, the Alfalfa can and does get along 
without the nodule-former. 
ALFALFA IN THE EAST.—The claim that Al¬ 
Alfalfa, it would not be policy to undertake it. We 
do know that corn is acid-tolerant, and the advice Of 
the editor on page 700. where he says, “Plant corn! 
Plant corn!” cannot be improved upon, especially if 
your soil is very sour. i. j. mathews. 
Michigan. 
pointment, but this Spring I recovered 
from it, because where the hens took 
the turnips, there was a fine stand of 
grass, and on the narrow strip, none at 
all—it had been completely smothered. 
As no clover was in sight, I sowed it 
with clover alone, being the second 
clover seeding. Now, after haying, 
there is little clover to be seen. This 
confirms my opinion that Spring seed¬ 
ing with grain is the safer method for 
me. 
Kennebec 
G. s. PAINE. 
Co., Maine. 
LOOKING ACROSS THE BLACKBERRY FIELD. Fig. 428. 
GRAIN BAG AS FIRE EXTINGUISHER. 
N a dry Summer those whose fields adjoin a line 
of railroad are constantly menaced by the dan¬ 
ger of fire running through the stubble, or even 
destroying standing crops. For whipping out a fire a 
wet grain bag has everything I have ever seen tried, 
“beaten to a frazzle.” This method 
was learned in the short grass coun- 
tiy, years ago, at a time when we 
burned miles of firebreaks each Fall 
to save Winter pasturage for the cat¬ 
tle. Grasping the bag by one end and 
swinging it overhead the free end 
comes down well flattened out, and the 
broad, moist surface blots out a good 
strip at every blow. A solid grain bag 
(a bran sack is too light), wetted every 
few minutes, is heavy enough to swing 
well and come down with a good 
whack. When the fire is simply 
brushed out or stamped out it breaks 
out again and again, and it takes live¬ 
ly work to get ahead of the creeping 
flames. The moistened bag discourages 
the fire from starting again where it 
has been beaten out and makes one’s 
blows count for something. 
One needs to “step lively” at such a 
time and make every blow count. It 
is usually impossible to work in front 
of a fire in standing crops and one 
has to make a flank attack, following 
up the sides until the head of the fire 
is overtaken. But in stubble one can 
whip out the very point of the ad¬ 
vancing fire and then work back along 
the sides. The railroad people have 
urged farmers to maintain firebreaks 
along the railroad right-of-way. Hav¬ 
ing noticed that several fires running 
through a Timothy meadow stopped at 
a border of a field of Alfalfa, the 
idea of li\ ing firebreak suggested it¬ 
self, and I am now trying to get a 
four-rod strip of Alfalfa established 
along my railroad boundary. 
Monroe Co., N. Y. geo. Arnold. 
THE NEW METHOD OF GROWING BLACKBERRIES. Fig. 429. 
ALFALFA AND SOIL FERTILITY. 
W ITH reference to the article by 
J. H. Reisner on pages 757-8, 
Mr. Reisner assumes that Al¬ 
falfa takes all its nitrogen from the 
air. Experiments and observations 
prove that this claim is too extrava¬ 
gant. It has been shown that Alfalfa 
will take its nitrogen from the soil if 
that element is in abundance, rather 
than obtaining it from the air. The attack of the 
nodule-forming bacteria on the Alfalfa root is iden¬ 
tical with the infection of any other fungus on a 
plant. The bacterium really makes a sore on the 
Plant, where it forms a nodule (which is simply a 
house for it to live in). 
It is common observation that Alfalfa plants 
growing near a manure pile have a great many 
less nodules on their roots than have those which 
are growing in poorer soil. On one particular occa¬ 
sion I remember when this fact was demonstrated 
very forcibly. A neighbor wanted to get some soil 
from an old Alfalfa field to inoculate the soil in a 
new field which he was seeding. He drove into the 
field, and noticing that the Alfalfa plants near an 
old straw stack were much more vigorous than those 
in other parts of the field, he prepared to get his 
COMFORTABLE DAYS AT CULTIVATING. Fig. 430. 
falfa will prove profitable everywhere in the East is 
a doubtful one. There is no question but that it is 
a wonderful crop. In fact, I know of a little piece 
of ground in Alfalfa at the Michigan Experiment 
Station that gave four cuttings last season, the sum 
of the average lengths of each cutting being 9)4 
feet and making a yield of something like six tons 
per acre. This is big, but it is not proof that Al¬ 
falfa should be grown everywhere, although I may 
state that the ground upon which this Alfalfa grew 
was but little better than blow sand, and had not 
been fertilized recently. Where the conditions are 
such that a seeding of Alfalfa may be had without 
too much expense in labor and money, it may profit¬ 
ably be grown, but upon some of the Eastern soils 
which are highly acid in character, and where large 
amounts of lime must be applied in order to raise 
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION. 
S' 
IR HORACE PLUNKETT, in his 
address at Dublin to the American 
Commission of Agriculture, said: 
“Today you have this paradox— 
you have provided education and useful 
information for your farmers in a degree 
and of a quality which cannot be sur¬ 
passed in any European country. Yet 
American agriculture, by the test of the 
yield of the staple crops, is the least pro¬ 
ductive to be found in any civilized coun¬ 
try except Russia.” R. n. 
There are two or three things to be 
said about that. A large share of this 
education and useful knowledge has 
never been filtered down to the people 
who most need it. Too many of our 
agricultural teachers lack the power to 
make their science practically avail¬ 
able. Like most other forms of educa¬ 
tion it is getting to be considered some¬ 
thing of a luxury for certain higher 
classes of farmers For 20 years the 
majority of our farm teachers could 
not see the absurdity of telling a man 
how to grow two blades of grass when 
he could not get a fair share of the 
price of one blade. Again, many of the 
average figures of crop yields are 
deceptive. This is a great country and an “average” 
covers a very wide range of territory. For example, 
take the oat crop. The average in the cooler climate 
of New England is over 30 bushels, while in the 
Southern States it goes to 10 or less. With wheat 
the more favorable localities go 20 bushels or more, 
while the Southern States fall to seven or less. 
Thus an “average” of this great country will be low 
because it will include figures from large areas 
where that particular crop is grown at a loss. Some 
of these critics like to talk “averages” about this 
great country. Yet we can take them to large areas 
the Eastern States where yields and 
in 
incomes are 
as high as any in Europe! 
“When the boy first takes the hoe in hand, see that 
the lower hand is thumb down. Otherwise he will never 
have the right grasp to use it efficiently,” says E. F. D. 
