THE RU RAL NEW-YORKER 
Building Up an Ohio Farm. 
Great Help from Sweet Clover. 
Part IT. 
INTER YETCII.—My experience with this 
crop on this particular farm was not very 
large, partly because my tenant so strongly object¬ 
ed to its use. We sowed about 20 pounds vetch 
with about 20 pounds of Soy beans, mixing the two 
together in the drill and applying about 40 pounds 
of the combination per acre. This was in 1913, the 
year when owing, as I felt, to a poor seed bed, poor 
cultivation and drought, the bean crop was disap¬ 
pointing. The vetch handled in this way seemed 
to me to be quite satisfactory. We 
inoculated for it, and it throve very 
well. Early in the season when we 
were cultivating the beans, it made its 
slightest growth, that being the nature 
of the plant as I have always found. 
Later after cultivation ceased, it made 
quite a vigorous growth and by Fall 
many stalks were three feet long. Tt 
looked so good that I left it on the 
ground to see if I could get a seed 
crop off it, but found that it had made 
actually too much growth to survive 
the Winter, and about nine-tenths of it 
winter-killed with me. 
BARLEY AND MAMMOTH CLO¬ 
VER.—We followed the beans in this 
case with barley seeded down with 
Mammoth clover. It was an extreme¬ 
ly dry year, and both the barley and 
Mammoth clover almost failed. As a 
result, it was hard to estimate the 
amount of good that we secured from 
the vetch. On other farms I have used 
this crop with very satisfactory re¬ 
sults; have plowed it under about May 
10th in time to plant corn or Soy 
beans, and secured very satisfactory 
returns in the shape of increased fer¬ 
tility and humus. The vetch grew 
splendidly on this farm, but as 
already stated, owing to one cause 
or another, it was very difficult to 
say just what results we obtained 
from it. 
ME LI LOTUS ALBA.—If I had 
known as much about the habits of 
this plant, the Sweet clover, when I 
began growing it on this particular 
farm, as I do now, I should be several 
thousand dollars to the good. Even 
as it is I feel very kindly towards the 
plant, and think, partly through 
chance no doubt, and partly through 
the splendid qualities of the plant it¬ 
self, it may have given me a little bet¬ 
ter results than the other plants which 
I have grown. Even so, I have had a 
few discouraging things with it and 
have told everybody with whom 1 
talked that in growing Melilotus alba 
they need not expect to have an en¬ 
tirely smooth road to success. My first 
field was a 20-acre lot which had grown 
a sparse and small amount of Medium 
Red clover the previous year. We 
plowed it in the Spring, sowed to oats, 
Canada peas, and Melilotus alba. The 
season was unfavorable, the seeding a 
little bit late, especially for the 
Canada peas. The oats and peas 
grew perhaps 35 inches tall, and 
then I turned some dairy cows in on 
the field. A drought had set in. The 
oats and peas made no more growth 
at all, and the 20 acres lasted 20 cows 
for only about two weeks before they 
were eaten off fairly close. Abundant 
rain would have given better pasture. 
LACK OF INOCULATION.—I then 
took the cows out and put on other pasture. The 
Melilotus was up by that time four or five inches 
tall. About July 1st, when walking over the field 
I saw that the Melilotus looked decidedly sick. Ex¬ 
amining the roots I found no nodules. The field 
had not been inoculated and I immediately guessed 
that it was suffering for inoculation. I had my 
tenant take inoculated soil and just a little basic 
slag; perhaps 200 pounds of the latter per acre, and 
about 100 pounds of soil. lie went over the field 
with these, both being mixed together in the fer¬ 
tilizer box and being drilled together; covered 
slightly with the loose earth thrown up by the disks. 
We had a rain inside of two weeks, and what plants 
were still living greened up very satisfactorily. 
Their nodules appeared at least a good deal better 
than they had been, and the plants went into Winter 
in fairly good shape. 
’ SPRING HEAVING.—This field had not been 
ditched, and it was of a nature inclined to heave 
in the Spring. The next Spring was particularly 
hard on all of our meadows. Constant freezing and 
thawing continued for several weeks. My tenant 
told me one day that this Sweet clover had all 
heaved out, and was now lying on top of the 
ground. At the first opportunity I examined it and 
found that he was about right. The plants had 
heaved until they had probably pulled out five 
inches on an average. The tips of the roots were 
still in the soil, but it seemed hopeless to let the 
The House on a New York Deserted Farm. Fig. 495. 
Stack of Pea Vines at a Canning Factory. Fig. 497. 
meadow stand. Consequently I told him we would 
plow it up and put in something else. lie went 
to the field to plow one day and discovered that 
these plants were beginning to grow even when 
they were holding only by the tips of their roots. 
Before plowing more than one furrow he telephoned 
to me, and I told him we would give them another 
chance. When I examined them I found that they 
were growing as he said, and as a matter of fact, 
I believe that four-fifths of these plants lived. Even 
so, we had a thin stand on the field. We cut the 
first crop for hay, cutting it about a foot high, and 
securing only a very moderate yield. The second 
crop we cut for seed. My tenant did not understand 
how very well, and neither did I, so we secured only 
about a bushel of *e<>d nor acre. W^ did. howevo’’. 
1319 
learn a little more about how to do and how not to 
do, experience which came in useful later on. 
FURTHER EXPERIENCE.—After removing the 
seed crop, such as it was, I found late in the Fall 
that sufficient plants had come up during the Sum¬ 
mer to make about as good a stand the next year 
as we had the first year, and I therefore did not 
plow the field up the following Spring. In 1914, 
early in the Spring, I was carefully examining this 
field, and found that the seed which we had tried 
to harvest the previous Fall had very largely shat¬ 
tered off on the ground, and had not yet germin¬ 
ated. -The freezing and thawing had covered it 
perhaps an eighth of an inch deep. It was healthy 
looking and appeared to be ready to 
grow. When warm weather came, it 
woke up and did grow, the field being 
a rather attractive sight. 
PASTURING THE CLOVER.—With 
our first stand, the plants had not act¬ 
ed thrifty throughout their entire life. 
In fact, a great many of them showed 
lack of inoculation until the middle of 
the Summer in 1913. This young 
growth, however, had its inoculation 
all satisfactory to itself, and it grew 
very nicely from the very beginning. 
In the Fall of 1914 I had a very nice 
stand over the entire field, and the 
plants were all thrifty and vigorous. 
This Spring, about May 1st, I turned 
about 12 head of two-year-old Holstein 
heifers and about eight work horses 
into the field. They throve remark¬ 
ably, and you could not any more than 
notice where they had eaten anything 
until in June, when they did in spots 
get the clover eaten down to within 
perhaps a foot of the ground. Cattle¬ 
men who visited the field said that I 
should have between 50 and 75 head 
of cattle in there instead of the num¬ 
ber I did have. About the first of 
July I cut the field for hay, cutting 
it a foot high; secured about 12 loads 
of hay from the 20 acres, and as I 
write, July 12th, the field is again in 
full bloom preparing to make a good 
seed crop. 
HOGS ON SWEET CLOVER.—One 
of the very poorest fields on this farm 
was a red clay hillside of perhaps 
three acres extent which had been 
used for a hog lot. In 1914 I seeded 
this down to Sweet clover, kept the 
hogs off it long enough for it to get a 
little started, and then turned them 
back on, pasturing it part of the time 
pretty close. This Spring I did not 
have enough hogs to keep it pastured 
down. The result was that on July 1st 
the crop stood about seven feet tall on 
part of the field, and fully five feet tall 
on the smallest plants. This field has 
received no particular attention aside 
from having tire seed sown on a prop¬ 
erly prepared seed bed and properly 
inoculated. It was, before sowing the 
Sweet clover, so poor that even weeds 
did not grow.- No kind of grasses were 
growing there and it was almost as 
bare as the road. I have not tried to 
grow any crop on this lot, of course, 
and I shall simply continue growing 
Sweet clover here as a pasture crop. 
I consider it the greatest pasture crop 
in America, and would not even ex¬ 
cept the Alfalfa when used for this 
purpose. 
RENOVATING OLD PASTURE.— 
On another field of about 20 acres 
there was a rather thin stand of Can¬ 
ada Blue grass growing. This field I 
was using for pasture. In the Spring 
of 1914 I started going over this entire field with a 
pasture mixture very largely composed of Melilotus 
alba. The season’s work crowded us too mucn, 
and we finished only about two or three acres. The 
Sweet clover as I write stands six feet tall except¬ 
ing where the stock have eaten it off, and if you 
were to look at the field, you would say that these 
two or three acres had about as much feed on them 
as the 17 acres or thereabouts which is in Canada 
Blue grass. 
STARTING THE STOCK.—Somebody is getting 
ready to say that the reason the Sweet clover is 
sc large here is that the stock have not eaten it. 
This is not the case by any means, and I have never 
seen animals thrive any better than when confined 
to almost a straight ration of the Sweet clover. I 
