cupied. Experiments should be made with it under favorable
conditions respecting moisture and soil tilth. Fifteen pounds of seed
should be used, and the seed should be well covered, as is the case
with all seeds sown in mid-summer.

CHAPTER VI

ALFALFA

Adaptation to Eastern Needs.--The introduction of alfalfa into the
eastern half of the United States will prove a boon to its depleted
soils, encouraging the feeding of livestock and adding to the value of
manures. It will affect soils directly, as does red clover, when
farmers appreciate the fact that its rightful place on their farms is
in rotation with grain. Under western conditions, where no other crop
can compete with it in value, as is the case in semi-arid belts, its
ability to produce crops for a long term of years adds much to its
value, but in eastern agriculture this characteristic is not needed. On
most soils of the east it will not remain productive for more than four
to six years, and that fact detracts little from its value. It should
fit into crop-rotations, adding fertility for grain crops. When grown
in a six-years rotation with corn and oats or other small grain, it
furnishes a rich sod for the corn, and the manure made from the hay
helps to solve the farmer's fertility problem.

Fertility and Feeding Value.--Vivian says that "the problem of the
profitable maintenance of fertility is largely a question of an
economic method of supplying plants with nitrogen." The greatest value
of alfalfa to eastern farming lies in its ability to convert
atmospheric nitrogen into organic nitrogen. It has no equal in this
respect for relatively long crop-rotations, storing in its roots and
successive growths of top far more nitrogen within three or four years
than is possible to any other of our legumes. A good stand of alfalfa,
producing nine crops of hay in the three years following the season of
seeding, will produce from nine to twelve tons of hay. Good fields,
under the best conditions, have produced far more, but the amounts
named are within reach of most growers on land adapted to the plant. A
ton of hay, on the average, contains as much nitrogen as five or six
tons of fresh stable manure. Thus there comes to the farm a great
amount of plant-food, to be given the land in the manure, and in
addition the roots and stubble have stored in the ground enough
nitrogen to feed a successive corn crop, and a small grain crop which
may follow the corn. Moreove