Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement — Alfalfa

ALFALFA

Adaptation to Eastern Needs.

--The introduction of alfalfa into the eastern half of the United States will prove a boon to its depleted soils, encouraging the feeding of livestock and adding to the value of manures.

It will affect soils directly, as does red clover, when farmers appreciate the fact that its rightful place on their farms is in rotation with grain.

Under western conditions, where no other crop can compete with it in value, as is the case in semi-arid belts, its ability to produce crops for a long term of years adds much to its value, but in eastern agriculture this characteristic is not needed.

On most soils of the east it will not remain productive for more than four to six years, and that fact detracts little from its value.

It should fit into crop-rotations, adding fertility for grain crops.

When grown in a six-years rotation with corn and oats or other small grain, it furnishes a rich sod for the corn, and the manure made from the hay helps to solve the farmer's fertility problem.

Fertility and Feeding Value.

--Vivian says that "the problem of the profitable maintenance of fertility is largely a question of an economic method of supplying plants with nitrogen."

The greatest value of alfalfa to eastern farming lies in its ability to convert atmospheric nitrogen into organic nitrogen.

It has no equal in this respect for relatively long crop-rotations, storing in its roots and successive growths of top far more nitrogen within three or four years than is possible to any other of our legumes.

A good stand of alfalfa, producing nine crops of hay in the three years following the season of seeding, will produce from nine to twelve tons of hay.

Good fields, under the best conditions, have produced far more, but the amounts named are within reach of most growers on land adapted to the plant.

A

ton of hay, on the average, contains as much nitrogen as five or six tons of fresh stable manure.

Thus there comes to the farm a great amount of plant-food, to be given the land in the manure, and in addition the roots and stubble have stored in the ground enough nitrogen to feed a successive corn crop, and a small grain crop which may follow the corn.

Moreover, the roots have filled the soil with organic matter, improving the physical condition of the soil and subsoil.

[Illustration: Alfalfa on the Ohio State University Farm.

] Another gain is found in the content of phosphoric acid and potash in the manure, much of which was drawn from soil supplies out of reach of the other farm crops.

The profit from introduction of alfalfa into a region's agriculture is very great.

Alfalfa makes a nutritious and palatable feed for livestock.

A ton contains as much digestible protein as 1600 pounds of wheat bran.

Climate and Soil.

--The experimentation with alfalfa by farmers has been wide-spread, and the percentage of failure has been so large that many have believed this legume was unfitted to the climate and soil of the country east of the Missouri River.

Successful experience has shown that it can be made to take a considerable place in eastern crop-schemes.

The climate is not unfavorable, as is evidenced by large areas of good alfalfa sods on thousands of farms.

The abundant rainfall brings various weeds and grasses into competition with it, and that will remain a serious drawback until growers learn to clean their surface soils by good tillage before seeding.

Any land that is sufficiently well drained to produce a good corn crop in a wet summer can grow alfalfa if the seed-bed is rightly made.

The loose soils are more difficult to seed successfully than is the land having enough clay to give itself body, although most experimenters select their most porous soils.

All farms having good tilth can bring alfalfa into their crop-rotations.

Free Use of Lime.

--The conditions requisite to success in alfalfa-growing are not numerous, but none can be neglected.

Alfalfa should be given a calcareous soil when possible, but an acid soil can be made favorable to alfalfa by the free use of lime.

There must remain a liberal amount after the soil deficiency has been met, and when the use of lime is on a liberal scale, the pulverized limestone makes the safest carrier.

However, 50 bushels of stone-lime per acre can be used safely on any land that is not distinctly sandy, and that amount is adequate in most instances.

Inoculation.

--The necessity of inoculation has been discussed in Chapter IV.

Eastern land would become inoculated for alfalfa if farmers would adopt the practice of mixing a little alfalfa with red clover whenever making seedings.

Some alfalfa plants usually make growth, securing the bacteria in the dust of the seed, presumably.

The addition of one pound of alfalfa seed per acre would assist materially in securing a good stand when the day came that an alfalfa seeding was desired.

Fertilization.

--The ability of alfalfa to add fertility to the farm, and directly to the field producing it when all the crops are removed as hay, does not preclude the necessity of having the soil fertile when the seeding is made.

The plants find competition with grass and other weeds keen under eastern skies where moisture favors plant-life.

In their first season this is markedly true.

There should be plenty of available plant-food for the young plants.

Stable manure that is free from the seeds of pernicious weeds makes an excellent dressing.

It is good practice to plow down a heavy coat of manure for corn and then to replow the land for alfalfa the next season.

A top-dressing of manure is good, affording excellent physical condition of the surface for starting the plants.

Eight tons per acre make a good dressing.

If land is not naturally fertile, mineral fertilizers should be applied.

A mixture of 350 pounds of 14 per cent acid phosphate and 50 pounds of muriate of potash is excellent for an acre of manured land.

In the absence of manure, 100 pounds of nitrate of soda and 50 pounds of muriate of potash should be added to the mixture.

If the materials are wet, a drier must be used.

The fertilizer should be drilled into the ground prior to the seeding.

A Clean Seed-bed.

--Much failure with alfalfa is due to summer grasses and other weeds.

The moisture in our eastern states favors plant-life, and most soils are thoroughly stocked with the seeds of a large number of weeds.

The value of blue-grass and timothy would be comparatively small if they were not capable of monopolizing the ground when well started and given fertility.

Alfalfa plants are less capable of crowding out other plants, and especially in their first season.

Their habit of growth is unlike that of grass.

Rational treatment of alfalfa demands that the surface soil be made fairly clean of weed seed, and this applies with peculiar force to annual grasses, like fox-tail.

If attention were paid to this point, failures would be far less numerous.

Old grass land should not be seeded until a cultivated crop has followed the plowing.

The land should be in good tilth, and capable of producing a good crop of any sort.

Alfalfa is not a plant for poor land, although it does add organic matter and nitrogen.

Varieties.

--There is only one variety of alfalfa in common use in this country, and the western-grown seed sold upon the market is known simply as alfalfa.

Bound up in this one so-called variety are many strains differing in habit of growth, and their differentiation will occur, just as it has in the case of wheat, and is now proceeding slowly with timothy.

The eastern grower at present should use the variety of the west that is furnishing nearly all the seed produced in this country.

There is a variety known as Sand Lucerne that has shown value for the light, sandy soils of Michigan.

The Turkestan variety was introduced for dry, cold regions, but does not produce much seed.

Clean Seed.

--Care should be exercised to secure seed free from impurities.

If one is not a competent judge, he should send a sample to his state experiment station for examination.

The practice of adulteration is decreasing, but the seed may have been taken from land infested with pernicious weeds.

The impurity most to be feared is dodder.

There are several varieties, the seeds varying in size and color.

The same pest may be found in clover fields, but the injury is less because the clover stands only two years.

The dodder seed germinates in the soil, and the plant attaches itself to the alfalfa, losing its connection with the soil and forming a mass of very fine vines that reach out to other alfalfa plants.

In this way it spreads, feeding on the sap of the host plants and killing them.

When the infestation is in only a few spots in the field, the remedy is to cover with straw, soak with kerosene oil, and burn.

All the infestation at the edges of these spots must be destroyed.

When the dodder is too widely distributed throughout the field to permit of this treatment, the only course is to plow the field at once, and to grow cultivated crops for two or three years.

It is believed that no variety of dodder produces seed freely in the eastern states, and that the hay made from the first crop of alfalfa or red clover will not contain any seed of this pernicious plant.

The Seeding.

--When alfalfa has become established on eastern farms, the difficulties in making new seedings will be smaller.

The experience of growers will save from mistakes in selection of soils and preparation of the ground, and the thorough inoculation with the right bacteria that can come only with time will do much to insure success.

The unwisdom of making seedings in ground filled with grass and other weed seeds will be appreciated.

It is quite probable that much successful seeding will be made in wheat and oats, where the alfalfa is to stand only one or two years.

These practices are not for the beginner.

His land is not thoroughly supplied with bacteria, and every chance should be given the alfalfa.

If there are no annual grasses, such as appear so freely in some regions in mid-summer, spring seeding is excellent.

A cover crop is then desirable, and nothing is better for this purpose than barley at the rate of 4 pecks of seed per acre.

In all experimental work 25 pounds of bright, plump alfalfa seed per acre should be sown.

The seeding should be made as soon as spring comes, the barley being drilled in, and the seed-spouts of the drill thrown forward so that the alfalfa will fall ahead of the hoes and be covered by them.

Seeding in August.

--Much land is infested with annual grasses and other weeds, and in such case seedings should be made in August, as described in Chapter VIII.

Subsequent Treatment.

--If the alfalfa plants find the bacteria at hand, they will begin to profit from them within the first month of their lives.

A large percentage of the plants may fail to obtain this aid in land which has not previously grown alfalfa, and within a few months they indicate the failure by their light color, while the plants liberally supplied with nitrogen through bacteria become dark green.

Where there are no bacteria, the plants turn yellow and die.

There are diseases that attack alfalfa, causing the leaves to turn yellow, and when they appear, the only known treatment of value is to clip the plants with a mower without delay.

The next growth may not show any mark of the diseases.

[Illustration: Curing alfalfa at the Pennsylvania Experiment Station.

] When alfalfa is seeded in the spring on rich land, a hay crop may be taken off the same season.

If the plants do not make a strong growth, they should be clipped, and the tops should be left as a mulch.

The clipping and all future harvestings are made when the stalks start buds from their sides near the ground.

This ordinarily occurs about the time some flowers show, and is the warning that the old top should be cut off, no matter how small and unprofitable for harvesting it may be.

The exception to this rule is found only in the fall.

An August seeding may make such growth in a warm and late autumn that flowering will occur, and lateral buds start, but the growth should not be clipped unless there remains time to secure a new growth large enough to afford winter protection.

This is likewise true of a late growth in an old alfalfa field.

Owners of soils that are not well adapted to the alfalfa plant will find top-dressing with manure helpful to alfalfa fields when made in the fall.

The severity of winters in a moist climate is responsible for some failures.

If the soil is not porous, heaving will occur.

A

dressing of manure, given late in the fall, and preferably during the first hard freeze, will prevent alternate thawings and freezings in some degree.

The manure should have been made from feed containing no seeds of annual grasses or other weed pests.

Rolling in the spring does not serve to settle heaved alfalfa plants.

The tap-roots are long, and when they have been lifted by action of frost, they cannot be driven back into place.

It is believed that the permanence of an alfalfa seeding may be increased by the use of mineral fertilizers in the early spring.

In the case of one alfalfa field of fifteen years' standing in the east, the fertilizers were applied immediately after the first hay crop of the year was removed.

Three hundred and fifty pounds of acid phosphate and 50 pounds of muriate of potash per acre is the mixture recommended.

When old alfalfa plants do not stand thickly enough on the ground, grasses and other weeds come in readily.

They can be kept under partial control by use of a spring-tooth harrow, the points being made narrow so that no ridging will occur.

The harrow should be used immediately after the harvest, and will not injure the alfalfa.

It does not pay to use alfalfa for pasturage in our eastern states because the practice shortens the life of the seeding.

Alfalfa makes a seed crop in profitable amount only in our semi-arid regions.

No attempt to produce a seed crop in the east should be made.

CHAPTER VII