Barley and Alfalfa.
I have some alfalfa which is a poor stand. Can I disc it up heavily and seed in some barley for winter pasture?
You can get barley into your alfalfa as you propose, but you should not seed until fall. The more barley you get into your alfalfa, however, the less alfalfa you will have afterward. If you want to improve your afalfa, keep everything else out of the field and help the plants by regular irrigations during the balance of the growing season.
Beets and Potatoes.
Which is the best for dairy cows, plain red mangels or a cross between these and sugar beets? Can you suggest a more profitable variety of potato than the Oregon Burbank?
If you can get a cross which gives you more tonnage than a mangel and a higher nutritive content you would have something better to grow. The first point you have to determine by growing the two side by side and weighing the product; the nutritive value of each will have to be determined by chemical analysis. Until these determinations are actually made a comparison of desirability is nothing but conjecture. There are several other potatoes which are sometimes more profitable here and there for early crop when grown in an early locality. If you are not in an early locality you are obliged to produce for the main crop, and nothing, to our knowledge, sells as well as the Burbank, if you get a good one.
Beets for Stock.
Will sugar beets grow on black alkali land? How many pounds of seed per acre should be used and when is it time for sowing in the San Joaquin valley? Which kind would be best for cows?
Beets will do more on alkali than some other plants, but too much alkali will knock them out. You must try and see whether you have too much alkali or not. You can sow at various times during the rainy season, for the beets will stand some frost. Sow 8 pounds per acre in drills 2 1/2 to 3 feet apart, so as to use a horse cultivator. For stock you had better grow large stock beets like marigolds or tankards - not sugar beets. It costs too much to get sugar beets out of the ground, because it is their habit to grow small and bury themselves for the sake of the sugar maker, while stock beets grow largely above ground.
Summer Start of Stock Beets.