may be desired. By growing it as
a rotation crop in these valleys it may be made to furnish the soil
indefinitely with supplies of nitrogen and humus. In these soils it may
be made to follow directly almost any crop grown on them, and similarly
it may be made to precede the growth of almost any crop for which the
locality has marked adaptation. Small cereal grains, timothy,
vegetables, field roots, potatoes, corn, small fruits and orchards may
be profitably grown on buried alfalfa meadows. This does not imply,
however, that alfalfa meadows should not, as a rule, be maintained for a
long term of years.

=Preparing the Soil.=--In preparing the soil for alfalfa the aim should
be to make a seed-bed clean, rich, fine, moist, even, and sufficiently
firm or friable, according to the conditions. The subsoil should also be
made sufficiently dry and open. From what has just been said, it will be
apparent that in properly preparing the seed-bed, it will be necessary
to study closely the requisite conditions.

The advantage from having a clean seed-bed will be apparent when it is
called to mind that alfalfa is a somewhat delicate plant when young, and
that because of this, it is ill able to overcome in the fight with
weeds. Cleanness in the surface soil may be obtained by summerfallowing
the land, by growing a root crop or a crop of corn or any of the
non-saccharine sorghums. When the seed is spring sown, this preparation
must be given the year previously, but when autumn sown, it may be given
the same season. In preparing the land thus, the aim should be to make
the surface as clean as possible, rather than to get weed seeds out of
the lower strata of the cultivated soil, in which they will likely
perish before the field sown to alfalfa is broken up again.
Summerfallowing makes an excellent preparation for the land, because of
the fine opportunity which it furnishes for cleaning the same perfectly
and leveling it off properly. The excellent condition in which it puts
the seed-bed, viewed from the standpoint of the duration of the years of
cropping that are likely to follow, would seem to more than justify such
preparation of the land. The outcome may more than justify the loss of
the crop for one season when thus summerfallowing the land. But it may
not be necessary to lose the production of one season whether the seed
is sown spring or autumn, as the summerfallowing in the North may follow
the pasturing off of some crop, and in