Clean Seed

Categories: ALFALFA

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.