Building Up an Ohio Farm. 
Great Help from Sweet Clover. 
Part III. 
ITROGEN RETURN.—Now I have estimated 
what I thought was a proper return in nitrogen 
when plowing under Melilotus alba. The Ohio Exper¬ 
iment Station checked over my figures, and said that 
they were entirely possible. If we called the yield 
7.500 pounds per acre, that being for roots as well as 
tops, we would have gathered from the air 13S.5 
pounds of nitrogen, worth $30.45. Supposing we had 
paid $4 an acre for the seed. That would make a 
gain per acre over cost of $20.45. Now if I were 
trying this proposition over again, I would give 
these fields a light application of ground limestone, 
because the Sweet clover dearly loves the lime. I 
would then inoculate at time of sowing; otherwise 
would handle the crop somewhat as we have been 
doing. If these two things had been done and we 
had known just how to save the seed crop each 
time, the profits would have been very large. Even 
as it is, I am very well satisfied with the entire 
deal, and next year am sort of hoping 
that on the hundred acres which I 
now have seeded to Melilotus on this 
farm, I can net something like three 
thousand dollars. This figure may be 
too high. I am not counting on it. and 
will not do so until the money is act¬ 
ually secured, but if I am able to 
anywhere near stock this acreage 
with cattle from May 1st to July 1st, 
the gain that they will make ought to 
pay perhaps the interest, insurance, 
and taxes on the entire place for a 
year’s time, and on 100 acres I think 
it barely possible to harvest $5,000 
worth of seed. The cost of harvesting 
is not great and so I am really think¬ 
ing that my estimate may be somewhat 
within reason. 
KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SWEET 
CLOVER.—There are not so many 
things that I have learned about the 
Sweet clover. I have never failed to 
secure a stand of it, but I have se¬ 
cured much the best stands when the 
seed was covered very shallowly, and 
some of my very best results have been 
with seed either self-seeded in the 
Fall, or sown the middle of the Winter. 
On the other hand, with the new scari¬ 
fied seed which we are now getting, 
germination can be made very quickly. 
Three days’ time is said to be enough. 
This seed could not be sown in the 
Fall or Winter. It should, in my 
opinion, be seeded somewhere between 
April 1st and July 15th. Almost any 
time in between should do. It should 
be very lightly covered and I think the 
results from it would be very gratify¬ 
ing. Also I think the 10 pounds of this 
seed per acre might do all right, when 
with the untreated seed I have usually 
sown 20 pounds. Inoculation I have 
found to be extremely important. In 
fact, I have failed worse on this score 
than on any other. The application of 
phosphorus in the form of basic slag 
or bone meal has given good results, 
although Sweet clover in my opinion 
will stand more, if it has enough lime 
and its inoculation, in soil impoverish¬ 
ment of all the chemical elements than any other 
plant that I know of. 
ALFALFA.—On this farm I made two rather dis¬ 
mal failures with Alfalfa. The first time we tried 
to sow a 20-acre field that was in clover the previous 
year. I thoroughly drained it and intended to sow 
in our usual manner during April. We had too 
much work to do, however, and could not even get 
the ground plowed until July. We sowed it then with¬ 
out manure, without inoculation, and without even 
fertilizer. I did not inoculate partly because Sweet 
clover was growing just over the fence and I 
thought it should have some inoculation already 
stored in the ground. I did not fertilize it, because 
I was feeling pretty poor and thought maybe we 
would have enough manure a little later on to top- 
dress it and get through in this way. I have never 
favored sowing in Ohio the middle of the Summer, 
and the results in this case did not give me any 
more confidence in this method. The ground was 
pretty dry when we sowed and we had only occa¬ 
sional showers. The result was a fair stand in a 
few spots where the moisture was good and rather 
a dismal failure on the rest of it. I did not inocu¬ 
late this field the next year either. There seemed 
the rural nevv-vorker 
not to be enough plants to be worth while. What 
plants survived are still there. We now pasture the 
field and the few plants that are there are thrifty, 
of good color, and show proper inoculation. 
CAREFUL SEEDING.—The next field we seeded 
with more pains. We put what manure we had on 
before plowing, prepared a pretty good seed bed, 
sowed 20 pounds of seed per acre. My tenant for¬ 
got to inoculate, and I was not there enough so that 
I knew of the omission until some time after seed¬ 
ing. We secured a good stand, and it looked all 
right until about July 15th, when it turned sick and 
yellow. I had him immediately inoculate it with 
soil, and at the same time applied a little basic 
slag. It greened up satisfactorily, but the Summer 
was very dry and during the Fall he insisted, 
against my wish, in pasturing the field. The result 
was that the next Spring it came on weak. It made 
a very scanty cutting, and probably the last straw 
in the case was that he allowed it to become a good 
deal too ripe and mowed off probably two inches of 
the young second growth when cutting. After this 
time it showed very poor indeed, and in the Spring 
of 1014 I plowed it up. This time I plowed very 
deeply. I covered practically the entire field with 
a good coat of manure, prepared a good seed bed, 
sowed it early in April with a little beardless bar¬ 
ley, secured a splendid stand and it is now doing 
quite nicely. Off 20 acres we removed 30 loads with 
the first cutting, and considering the character of the 
soil we bought here, this was not doing at all poorly. 
ALFALFA WITH BARLEY.—I also seeded down 
this Spring SO acres in addition to this field, using 
our regular procedure, sowing early in April with a 
little beardless barley, and I have a satisfactory 
stand on this entire amount, thus making a hundred 
acres of Sweet clover and a hundred acres of Alfalfa 
on the farm of 240 acres. I intend from now on to 
obtain some pasture and seed from the Sweet clover, 
and hay from the Alfalfa. I am now able to handle 
a good many head of cattle and will have large 
amounts of manure. I think the farm is amply in 
shape to return good profits every year, and that by 
far the greatest expense is over. It is in shape so 
that intelligently handled it will recover its fertility 
very rapidly. I feel confident that with the Sweet 
clover I can return at least 75 or SO pounds of nitro¬ 
gen per year, while its seed crop will probably be 
1345 
profitable for some years to come. By the time its 
seed crop is cheap enough so that it does not pay, I 
shall have the farm as fertile as anyone could ask 
for, and can grow any crops that I wish. 
SOIL FERTILITY.—I have felt it necessary to 
tell something about both the crops which I had 
grown and the soil treatment in order to give 
everyone a fair idea of what I had done on this 
place. As was to be expected, the Sweet clover has 
required the least treatment of any plant grown. 
After its lime and inoculation requirements were 
satisfied, it went ahead and did the rest without 
any fuss or feathers. The Alfalfa, as was also to 
be expected, has required the most work. Both 
plants I now have growing quite successfully. The 
Alfalfa has required careful drainage, thorough in¬ 
oculation. and the application of liberal amounts of 
phosphorus. This I have used in the form of basic 
slag. Strangely enough, especially on such a farm 
as this, the Alfalfa has not responded to the appli¬ 
cation of manure as well as I expected it to, nor 
apparently as well as it has to basic slag. I am 
now using not less than 400 pounds of basic slag 
per acre, applied about every three 
years. 
BASIC SLAG AND LIMESTONE.— 
The 20-acre field, which I have de¬ 
scribed already, and where a thrifty 
growth of Alfalfa is now to be seen, 
had, in 1044, a very liberal coating of 
manure excepting in one corner. It 
has a moderate application of basic 
slag on the entire field. It also had a 
moderate application of ground lime¬ 
stone rock. The corner where there 
was no manure can be found and you 
can see a little difference in the Al¬ 
falfa here but not nearly as much as 
I expected to find. The reason for this 
very clear. Alfalfa finds most of 
Its own nitrogen, and requires only a 
little of this in the soil. It is. how¬ 
ever, a rank feeder of phosphorus, and 
this I have applied in the basic slag. 
I really wonder sometimes if the appli¬ 
cation of manure to a field where we 
expect to sow Alfalfa does not. really 
benefit as much by making the ground 
habitable to the beneficent bacteria 
as it does in any other way. Cer¬ 
tainly my experience on this farm 
would indicate that this might be the 
case and if I were doing it over again, 
I would plow deeply as we did in pre¬ 
paration for our last seeding; I would 
apply the ground limestone as we did, 
would unquestionably inoculate and 
would apply a liberal quantity of basic 
slag for my fertilizer. I would use as 
much as 400 pounds per acre. This 
material does not leach. It does not 
revert as acid phosphate does and is 
right there on the job whenever the 
plant roots are ready to use it. I 
have applied ground limestone rock to 
quite liberal acreages on this farm, 
and while, as stated, it did not turn lit¬ 
mus paper pink, I feel pretty well sat¬ 
isfied that it has paid or will pay on 
account of making the soil a more 
habitable place for the beneficent bac¬ 
teria. 
APPLYING PHOSPHORUS.—I have 
now applied phosphorus, principally in 
the form of basic slag and bone meal, 
to all but one or two small fields of the farm, 
and I have applied it quite liberally. This one 
thing is certainly paying as well as anything that 
I have done. The basic slag, as to be expected I 
think, has up to this time shown the best results 
of anything, although I am just starting to cut SO 
acres of barley seeded last Spring on which I used 
bone meal, and the result with this fertilizer is also 
quite satisfactory. The barley indicates a very sat¬ 
isfactory yield, and the young Alfalfa growing in 
it looks very well. chas. b. wing. 
Ohio. 
Fruit growing on the Canary Islands is in a bad 
way. Bananas are selling at 38 cents a bunch and 
even with this but little more than half the crop is 
sold. The chief market was in England before the war. 
During September 19,454,341 pounds of fish were 
landed at Boston, Gloucester and Portland, the big 
New England fish harbors. This helped the high cost of 
living. 
A new French law gives the government power to 
requisition wheat and flour if needed by the civil pop¬ 
ulation. The price must not exceed $2.63 per 100 
pounds. 
jsjL-v,, 
w: ^_ - -' i 
Scene in an 80,000-barrel Apple Warehouse. Fig. 507. 
Rear of Packing-House: Cooling Tubes Open at Night. Fig. 508. 
