Cultivating Alfalfa

Categories: Grains and Forage Crops

When is the best time to cultivate alfalfa, and how often during the

season is it advantageous to do so? Which is the best implement to use?



Cultivated alfalfa is a term applied to alfalfa sown in rows and allowed

to grow in narrow bands with cultivated land between, and the irrigation

is then done in a furrow in the narrow cultivated strip. This will give

thriftier growth and perhaps more hay to the acre than flooded

broad-casted alfalfa, but it will cost so much more that the acre profit

would probably be less. This is an intensive culture of alfalfa, which

is still to be tested out in California, if any one should be inclined

to do it. Some one-cow suburbanite would be in condition to try the

scheme first. Probably you refer to disking, and for that an ordinary

disk is used with the disks set pretty straight to reduce the side

cutting, and this is done at different times of the year by different

growers. By doing it when the ground gets dry in the early spring much

of the foul stuff is cut out before the alfalfa starts strongly. But

disking seems to be good whenever in the year the soil is dry enough to

take it well.