Alfalfa. 
9 
Alfalfa Requires Water to Make a Good Growth.—Our average 
rainfall may be taken at 14 1-2 inches. In addition to this it requires 
from 6 to 8 inches of water per acre to grow the three crops usually 
cut in this section. Alfalfa is a deep rooted plant and will live when 
once established on high land even, with the addition of a small amount 
of water, but it needs the above amount of water to make a good 
growth. 
Alfalfa Ensilage.—The considerable, unavoidable loss incurred 
m making alfalfa hay, say from 17.5 to 60 per cent of the crop, togeth¬ 
er with the desirability of having some succulent fodder, has led to 
experiments in making alfalfa silage. The silage is good and is read¬ 
ily eaten by cattle, the following analyses may be taken as represent¬ 
ing its composition; moisture, 8 . 98 ; ash, 13 . 19 ; ether extract, fat 
2 . 93 ; crude protein, 14 . 18 ; crude fiber, 30.77 and nitrogen free extract 
29.95 per cent. 
Plant Food Required to Grow a Crop of Alfalfa.—The excellent re¬ 
sults observed to follow putting land down to alfalfa for three or more 
years, leads to the conclusion that it enriches the soil. In a cer¬ 
tain sense this is the case, and the practice of seeding run-down land 
to alfalfa and leaving it in alfalfa for several years before breaking it 
up again to plant other crops, has been the salvation of this section 
of Colorado, and yet it does not follow that the alfalfa plant does not 
require a large amount of plant food. The average percentage of 
crude ash in alfalfa hay is not far from 10.00 per cent, or in a crop of 
4 1-2 tons, 9,000 pounds, there will be 900 pounds of crude ash, which 
will contain 39.10 pounds of phosphoric acid, 231.5 pounds of potash 
(K 2 0 ), 62.8 pounds of chlorin, 208.8 pounds of lime (CaO). 
There are but few crops which will equal the alfalfa in its draft 
upon the resources of the soil in which it grows, but while other crops 
gather their food from a depth of two, four or five feet, alfalfa gathers 
its food from depths ranging from six to twelve feet—so on the assump¬ 
tion that the alfalfa plant has no greater power to gather its food than 
the wheat plant, for example, it has, owing to the greater depth to 
which its roots penetrate, from three to four times the depth of soil 
to feed on. This is an essential advantage, especially if the upper 
portions of the soil from which the wheat plant has to draw its food 
has already been partially exhausted by repeated cropping, as has 
been the case in many instances in this State. 
Most of our cultivated plants depend wholly upon the nitrogen 
stored in the soil for their supply, the alfalfa plant does so only in part, 
drawing a portion of its supply from the atmosphere. Though it 
may gather large amounts of this element from the soil, it probably 
returns more in the leaves that fall and the plants that die than it 
takes from the soil. 
Benefits Accruing to the Soil.—The statements of the preceding 
paragraph may seem somewhat contradictory to one another, and 
apparently contradictory to what is an acknowledged and well estab¬ 
lished fact, i. e., that cropping to alfalfa benefits our soils, and does not 
exhaust it as one would infer from the amount of potash (K2O) for in- 
