Clover And Acid Soils

Categories: THE CLOVERS

There are limited areas in which some clover

disease has flourished, and in some years insect attacks are serious.

Barring these factors which have relatively small importance when the

entire clover area is taken into account, the causes of clover failure

are under the farmer's control. The need of drainage increases, and the

deficiency in organic matter becomes more marked. The sale of hay and

straw, and especially the loss of liquid manures in stables, have

robbed many farms. These are adverse influences upon clover seedings,

but the most important handicap to clover is soil acidity. There is sad

waste when high-priced clover seed is put into land so sour that clover

bacteria cannot thrive, and there is ten-fold more waste in letting

land fail to obtain the organic matter and nitrogen clover should

supply. When land-owners refuse to let their soils remain deficient in

lime, clover will come into a prominence in our agriculture that it

never previously has known.