DRY LAND FARMING IN EASTERN COLORADO 
29 
thickens to a good sod. Brome grass furnishes good hay until the sod 
gets too thick and then will stand heavy pasturing. It gives early and 
late pasture and is often dormant in midsummer. 
Alfalfa should be tried on most farms on the Plains. Select a 
low spot or a place at the foot of a long slope where surface water 
from the rains can be carried to it by furrows. Do not plant on sod. 
Raise other crops until the sod is thoroughly subdued. 
Plow the ground deeply. Thoroughly pulverize and pack it and 
do not seed until the soil is moist to a depth of seven to nine feet, if 
you have to wait two or three years. While waiting, work the soil 
often and collect in it all the moisture you can from land above. 
Alfalfa will usually fail when sown in freshly plowed land. Plow 
deep but get the soil well settled before seeding. Sow with a grain 
drill, using twelve to fifteen pounds of seed as early in the spring as 
the danger from severe frosts is over. Use no nurse crop. 
Use seed grown on dry land. Seed from irrigated land is certain 
to bring a total failure, and a great proportion of the failures in east¬ 
ern Colorado have been assured from the start by the use of seed 
from irrigated fields. 
Prof. W. M. Jardine, U. S. Department of Agriculture, told the 
writer that in Utah a dry land strain of alfalfa had been developed 
that with an average annual rainfall of eleven inches yielded an 
average of two tons of hay per acre. Seed grown under such arid 
conditions finds eastern Colorado most congenial. 
When one year old, alfalfa should be harrowed early in the spring 
and again after each cutting. 
When two years old, and every year thereafter, alfalfa should be 
thoroughly cultivated with a disc harrow set to cut two to three 
inches deep. The alfalfa should be disked early in the spring and 
after each cutting. 
Alfalfa should be cut as soon as the first blooms appear. It will 
live many years longer than if left until in full bloom before cutting. 
Alfalfa must not be pastured so close as to have the crowns eaten off; 
when this is done, the plants die. 
Usually when alfalfa is seeded on dry land for the first time, it 
dies out in three or four years. The land should then be plowed and 
planted to another crop that can be thoroughly cultivated. At the 
end of one year reseed to alfalfa, using the same methods as employed 
for the first seeding. The second seeding usually thrives for many 
years as the first sowing has prepared the land to a good depth for the 
easy growth of the second seeding. 
Prof. P. K. Blinn, of the Colorado Experiment Station, has 
made a special study of alfalfa and has prepared the following state¬ 
ment for this bulletin: 
RAISING ALFALFA FOR SEED IN DRY FARMING. 
If a farmer on the dry plains has a well that will furnish just 
enough water for fifty head of stock, it would be absurd for him to 
