Prejudice Against Timothy

Categories: GRASS SODS

Timothy, among the grasses, is especially

in disrepute as a soil-builder, and yet its value is great. The belief

that timothy is hard on land is based upon observation of bad treatment

of this grass. There is a common custom of seeding land down to timothy

when it ceases to have sufficient available plant-food for a profitable

tilled crop, and usually this is the third year after a sod has been

broken. The seeding is m de with a grain crop that needs all the

commercial fertilizer that may chance to be used. Clover may be seeded

also, and on a majority of farms it fails to thrive when sown. If

clover does grow, the succeeding crop of timothy may be heavy. If

clover does not grow, the timothy is not so heavy. The seeding to grass

is made partly because a tilled crop would not pay, and partly because

a hay crop is needed. It comes in where other crops cannot come with

profit, and it produces fairly well, or very well, the first year it

occupies the ground by itself. With little or no aid from manure or

commercial fertilizer, it adds much to the supply of organic matter in

the soil, and it produces a hay crop that may be made into manure or

converted into cash.



If the sod were broken the following spring, giving to the soil all the

after-math and the mass of roots, its reputation with us would be far

better than it is. This would be true even if it had received little

fertilizer when seeded or during its existence as a sod, not taking

into account any manure spread upon it during the winter previous to

its breaking for corn. But the rule is not to break a grass sod when it

is fairly heavy. The years of mowing are arranged in the crop-rotation

to provide for as many harvests as promise immediate profit. On some

land this is two years, and not infrequently it is three. Where farms

are difficult of tillage, it is a common practice to let timothy stand

until the sod is so thin that the yield of hay is hardly worth the cost

of harvesting. Then the thin remnant of sod is broken for corn or other

grain, and the poor physical condition of the soil and the low state of

available fertility lead to the assertion that timothy is hard on the

soil. This is a fair statement of the treatment of this plant on most

farms.