f the heads have
turned a dark brown and when the bulk of them have assumed a reddish
brown tint, notwithstanding that some of the later heads may still be
in full flower. Vigorous crops may be cut with the self-rake reaper set
to cut low, otherwise many of the heads will not be gathered. To
facilitate this process, the ground should be made quite smooth even
before sowing the seed. But the seed crop is more commonly cut with the
field mower, to the cutter bar of which a galvanized platform is bolted,
the sides of which are about 6 inches high. From this the clover is
raked off into bunches with a rake. These bunches should not be large,
and since nearly all the heads in them will point upward, they should
not be turned over if rained on, but simply lifted up with a suitable
fork and moved on to other ground.

The seed crop cures quickly. It may be drawn and threshed at once, or it
may be stacked and threshed when convenient. If stacked, a goodly supply
of old hay or straw should be put next the ground, and much care should
be taken to protect the clover by finishing off the stack carefully with
some kind of grass or hay that will shed the rain easily. Since the
heads are very small and numerous, and since, as with all clovers, they
break off easily when ripe, much promptness and care should be exercised
in harvesting the seed crop. The best machine for threshing a seed so
small is the clover huller.

The yields of seed will run all the way from less than 3 bushels per
acre to 5 bushels, and some crops have been harvested in Wisconsin which
gave 7 bushels per acre. Four bushels would probably be about an average
yield. As the price is usually relatively high compared with other
clovers, the seed from white clover would be quite remunerative were it
not that in a dry season the yield is disappointing. In some instances
two crops are grown in succession; in others, one crop is reaped. The
land is then sown to barley the next year, and the following year clover
seed may be reaped again without sowing a second time. Usually, after
two successive crops of seed have been cut, blue grass crowds the
clover.

It should be possible to grow prodigious crops of white clover in
certain of the northern Rocky Mountain valleys, as, for instance, in
Montana and Washington, where the conditions for the application of
water to grow the plants and of withholding the same when ripening the
seed are completely under the control of the hus