Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1915 — GROWING ALFALFA IN NORTH [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GROWING ALFALFA IN NORTH

Recognized as Having Higher Feeding Value Than Clover and Could Be Made Part of Rotations. (By A. ARNT.) In red clover, alfalfa has a rival in many parts of the north. Here red clover luxuriates on a soil to which it seems especially adapted and which, while sharing with alfalfa the capacity for supplying nitrogen, both as a fertilizer to the soil and as a nutritive element in feed lacking in other field crops, has also shown greater endurance under the trying conditions of climate than have some of the strains of alfalfa that have been sown in the north. Alfalfa, however, is recognized as having a higher feeding value than clover. Could it, therefore, be made a part of ordinary rotations, it might be given a preference. On small farms, or on any farms intensively cultivated.

its value as a nitrogenous food —superior to clover —and the greater certainty of a crop when once fairly started, make it desirable that it should at least be tested in a small way. The longer life of an alfalfa meadow, as compared to one of clover, will often make it a most valuable adjunct to the farm. Success in handling the crop in a small way, supplemented by the knowledge thus acquired of the conditions making for such success, will afford the best guarantee against failure should it later be determined to devote to alfalfa a larger number of acres. Any good corn land —any land not too wet to grow red clover —should produce alfalfa as well. An abundance of vegetable matter in the soil is essential, and so also is good drainage, such as will prevent water from standing long, on the surface in low places, in winter, in spring, or after summer rains. The' water level in the soil should not be nearer than seven or eight feet from the surface.

Alfalfa Leaves.