o insure success. The
unwisdom of making seedings in ground filled with grass and other weed
seeds will be appreciated. It is quite probable that much successful
seeding will be made in wheat and oats, where the alfalfa is to stand
only one or two years. These practices are not for the beginner. His
land is not thoroughly supplied with bacteria, and every chance should
be given the alfalfa.

If there are no annual grasses, such as appear so freely in some
regions in mid-summer, spring seeding is excellent. A cover crop is
then desirable, and nothing is better for this purpose than barley at
the rate of 4 pecks of seed per acre. In all experimental work 25
pounds of bright, plump alfalfa seed per acre should be sown. The
seeding should be made as soon as spring comes, the barley being
drilled in, and the seed-spouts of the drill thrown forward so that the
alfalfa will fall ahead of the hoes and be covered by them.

Seeding in August.--Much land is infested with annual grasses and other
weeds, and in such case seedings should be made in August, as described
in Chapter VIII.

Subsequent Treatment.--If the alfalfa plants find the bacteria at hand,
they will begin to profit from them within the first month of their
lives. A large percentage of the plants may fail to obtain this aid in
land which has not previously grown alfalfa, and within a few months
they indicate the failure by their light color, while the plants
liberally supplied with nitrogen through bacteria become dark green.
Where there are no bacteria, the plants turn yellow and die.

There are diseases that attack alfalfa, causing the leaves to turn
yellow, and when they appear, the only known treatment of value is to
clip the plants with a mower without delay. The next growth may not
show any mark of the diseases.

[Illustration: Curing alfalfa at the Pennsylvania Experiment Station.]

When alfalfa is seeded in the spring on rich land, a hay crop may be
taken off the same season. If the plants do not make a strong growth,
they should be clipped, and the tops should be left as a mulch. The
clipping and all future harvestings are made when the stalks start buds
from their sides near the ground. This ordinarily occurs about the time
some flowers show, and is the warning that the old top should be cut
off, no matter how small and unprofitable for harvesting it may be. The
exception to this rule is found only in the fall. An August seeding may
make such growth