Building Up an Ohio Farm. 
Great Help from Sweet Clover. 
I’akt I. 
A RUN-DOWN FARM.—I have been asked to 
write concerning my experiences in building up 
poor soil. It is not a subject over which I enthuse 
very easily, because my experiences along this line 
have been in some cases mighty disappointing, in 
some cases rather expensive, but since the discus¬ 
sion may lead to better things with some other man, 
I have agreed to write 
along this line. In the 
Fall of Ihll one day I 
walked over a 240-acre 
farm which was being 
offered for sale. The 
ground lay well, was 
not rough, neither was 
it so flat as to be diffi¬ 
cult to drain. It was 
largely, or principally, 
composed of red clay, 
which has great vital¬ 
ity and is really diffi¬ 
cult to impoverish ab¬ 
solutely. The crops 
were miserable. T h e 
corn shocks looked al¬ 
most like sheaves of 
wheat. There was very 
little clover visible any¬ 
where, and the place 
plainly showed very 
great abuse. It was Of¬ 
fered for sale at $65 
per acre. There was a 
v e r y decent dwelling 
house, the other build¬ 
ings amounting to al¬ 
most nothing at all. I 
had had a little exper¬ 
ience in building up 
poor soil under some¬ 
what different condi¬ 
tions from this and the 
p rice asked for the 
place looked reasonable 
to me, consequently I 
purchased it. I was 
m u c li interested in 
growing for seed vari¬ 
ous legume crops, many 
of which I knew would 
thrive on poor soil. I 
will say right away that 
iii the first place this 
farm had been more 
shamefully abused than 
I had any idea of. It 
w a s decidedly poorer 
than I surmised and 
when I came to under¬ 
take building it up, I 
found much greater ex¬ 
pense, many more disappointments, and conditions 
in general much more unsatisfactory than I had ex¬ 
pected them to be. 
SOIL CONDITIONS.—This farm was on lime¬ 
stone ground and I tested it with litmus paper, 
which showed no apparent acidity. However, I 
think that if I had it to do over again. I would ap¬ 
ply ground limestone to the entire place; would do 
so quite liberally, not because I think the ground 
was sour, but because its humus had been absolute¬ 
ly exhausted. It was therefore inclined to be wet 
in the Spring and baking like the road in the Sum¬ 
mer time; rather difficult to work when fitting, and 
the limestone would partly correct this. The acid 
test showed a reasonably good amount of lime in 
the subsoil, and only a moderate amount in the 
surface soil. Finally I think that the application 
of this limestone would have corrected another bad 
condition on which I wish to comment at some 
length. 
BACTERIA.—Scientists have told us for years 
teria, and that it required three years’ time on most 
fields, four years’ time on others, in which to make 
conditions enough better so that the injurious bac¬ 
teria would be reduced in numbers and the bene¬ 
ficial ones would predominate. 
LEGUME CROPS.—Before I bought the farm al¬ 
most no legume crops at all were being grown. This 
serious error seems to be very conducive to the con¬ 
dition which I believe existed, that of changing the 
soil bacteria from the useful nitrogen-forming sorts 
to the injurious ones. No fertilizers, manure, or 
anything else were be- 
Fall Plowing on a Dupage County, Ill., Farm. Fig. 473. 
that the soil is a living thing; that a well cared for 
soil was simply teeming with beneficial bacteria, 
those which draw nitrogen from the air and give it 
to the plants and the soil. Under unfavorable con¬ 
ditions, however, they tell us that injurious bacteria 
thrive greatly. These injurious bacteria love soggy, 
cold, impoverished, sour soils, those which are de¬ 
ficient in humus as well as in Soil fertility. It has 
seemed to me in handling this farm that when I 
bought it it was simply teeming with injurious bac- 
ing applied; no tile 
drains were being laid, 
the farm was cash rent¬ 
ed, both owner and ten¬ 
ant doing their level 
best to get everything 
possible out of the 
place. Nothing was be¬ 
ing put back on. If I 
am right in my theory, 
this had produced a 
condition where the in¬ 
jurious bacteria were 
predominating, and this 
condition lost me more 
money on the deal than 
any other one thing. 
Since I bought the place 
I have grown legume 
crops in much greater 
proportions than any¬ 
thing else. Today the 
entire farm with the 
exception of perhaps 35 
a c r p;s of pasture, is 
seeded to Alfalfa and 
Sweet clover, both of 
which are doing reason¬ 
ably well. I will first 
describe briefly the 
plants which I have 
used and later will tell 
something of what I 
did to individual fields. 
SOY BEANS.—I had 
grown this crop for 
some years before pur¬ 
chasing this farm, and 
was familiar with its 
ability to thrive on poor 
ground. The entire 
farm had to be plowed 
up, as there was no de¬ 
cent meadow anywhere 
on it, therefore, I put 
about a hundred acres 
of it, picking some of 
the poorest ground, into 
Soy beans. That year 
my tenant prepared a 
reasonably good seed 
. bed, and we had fairly 
good rainfall through¬ 
out the season. The crop throve from the begin¬ 
ning. We had about six different varieties. Some 
did much better than others, but taken as a whole, 
the entire crop was very satisfactory, producing IS 
or 20 bushels per acre. We inoculated them, but 
applied no fertilizer of any kind. I am satisfied 
now that it was a mistake not to apply some fertil¬ 
izer, but I did not know as much then as I do now. 
I had not, at that time, worked out definite figures 
to ascertain whether Soy beans, where the entire 
