BIND WEED
Bindweed, belonging to the morning-glory family, is one of the meanest weeds that annoy alfalfa raisers. It spreads from the root, and is more than liable to smother out alfalfa or any other crop which tries to occupy its ground. If infested fields could be grazed closely with hogs or sheep, they might keep the bindweed down and finally eradicate it. If this cannot be done, the only remedy is to plow and use the land for some other crop.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Difficulties and Discouragements
Notwithstanding the fact that alfalfa is now grown successfully in all parts of the United States, in almost all kinds of soils and under many dissimilar conditions of climate, there are grouped here as a summary from preceding chapters the several difficulties and discouragements that may confront the one who would grow it.
1. Securing a Good Stand. Theoretically, the farmer should secure a good stand every year with every crop, but he does not. He obtains, however, poor stands of wheat and corn and potatoes oftener than a poor stand of alfalfa. Why does he fail with alfalfa? The following, at least in part, suggests why:
a He neglects to prepare sufficiently in advance. He should select his alfalfa field one or two years before he intends sowing. If he raises wheat, he should sow a little alfalfa seed with wheat, one or even two years before ready for alfalfa. This will leave a few roots and the proper bacteria will have been introduced into the soil. For two years there should be a vigorous fight against weeds, the fewest possible being permitted to ripen seed.
b He neglects to prepare properly for the preceding crop, and sometimes plants the wrong crop, although sorghum and Kafir corn are about the only very objectionable planting to precede alfalfa. These have usually taken too much of the land’s moisture, especially if the season has been somewhat dry, to permit a prosperous beginning of the plants from fall sown seed. Millet, oats or cowpeas are the best crops to precede, i. e. for the first trial. The plowing for this preceding crop should be deep. In clay land a subsoil plow (the kind which loosens but does not throw the subsoil to the surface) should follow. It is extremely important that a dressing of stable manure be plowed under for this preceding crop. The seed bed should be carefully prepared, and under favorable conditions. Working the ground when too wet would make it impossible to secure a proper seed bed later when preparing for alfalfa.
And There’s Still More to Follow
Dead Prairie Dogs
gathered up in a 20-minute walk through a “town” that had been poisoned. Nearly all the animals die inside their burrows. The cost of destroying them, according to Professor Lantz, is not over two cents per acre, not counting the labor, and a man can distribute the poison over about a quarter-section in a day
c He neglects to prepare the alfalfa seed bed properly. He should begin disking and harrowing as soon as the preparatory crop is off the ground, and continue this at intervals of ten or fifteen days until time for sowing, when the soil should be as fine as for an onion bed.
d He uses poor seed; seed that is infertile, or adulterated with weed seeds—undesirable and unreliable in every way.
2. Dying out the second year, which in most instances is due to one of two causes, viz.: neglect to plow under stable manure for the preceding crop, or pasturing alfalfa in its first year. Not an animal should be turned on an alfalfa field for pasture until the second or, preferably, the third year. Another cause is disturbance of the soil and plants by severe freezing. This may often be prevented in a degree by a light top-dressing of manure in December.
3. Failure through harvesting and stacking.
4. Injury from insects or disease.
These are practically all the things that need occasion serious vexation. Of course alfalfa calls for more work in harvesting than corn, or clover, or timothy; but one acre of prosperous alfalfa is worth two or three of corn, or clover or timothy, even for market, while for feeding purposes the difference is even greater. The “poor” farmer, the lazy farmer, the “corner grocery” farmer should not sow alfalfa.