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A Clean Seed-bed

Categories: ALFALFA

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, a
d 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.



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