Clover for Wet Lands.
What kind of alfalfa will do best on sub-irrigated land which is very wet? I have sown it in alfalfa and it grows finely for two or three years, but then the roots rot and die.
It is impossible to make any kind of alfalfa grow well on very wet land, that is, where the water comes too near the surface. Alfalfa has a deep-running tap root which is very subject to standing water. You can get very good results from the Eastern red clover on such land, because the red clover has a fibrous root which is content to live in a shallow layer of soil above water. But red clover will not stand drought as well as alfalfa, because it is shallower rooting. It is necessary, therefore, that water should be permanently near the surface or surface irrigation be frequently applied, in order to secure satisfactory growth of red clover in the drier sections of California. It is also necessary that neither land nor water carry alkali.
Frosted Grain for Hay.
The freeze struck us pretty severely. I had 125 acres of summer-fallowed wheat which I had estimated to make 20 sacks to the acre of grain. It was breast high in places already, and was just heading out. The frost pinched the stalks of this grain in several places and the heads are now turning white. It is ruined for grain. There is lots of fodder in it, and it should be made into hay. If so, should it not be cut and cured at once? What is the relative worth of such hay as compared with more matured hay? Would the fact that it is frozen make it injurious to feed?
If the whole plant seems to be getting white, the sooner it is cut the better. If the head is affected and the leaf growth continued, cutting might be deferred for the purpose of getting more of it. Hay made from such material will not be in any way dangerous, although it would be inferior as containing less nutritive and more non-nutritive matter. Such hay would seem to be most serviceable as roughage for cows or steers in connection with alfalfa hay or some other feed which would supply this deficiency.
Forage Plants in the Foothills.
We have 3,000 acres of foothill land and hope to be able to irrigate some land this spring and wish to know the best forage crops, for sheep and hogs, especially. Kafir corn, stock peas, rape, sugar-beets and artichokes are the varieties about which we desire information.
Where you have irrigation water available in the foothills you can get a very satisfactory growth of red clover. We have seen it doing very well on sloping land in your county where water was allowed to spill over from a ditch on the ridge to moisten the slope below. Winter rye and other hardy stock feeds could also be grown in the winter time on the protected slopes with the rainfall. Some such plants are not good summer growers, owing to the drought. Rape is a good winter grower by rainfall, but not so satisfactory as vetches and kale. Sugar beets are not so good for stock purposes as stock beets, which give you much more growth for the same labor and are more easily gathered because they grow a good part out of the ground. They will stand considerable freezing and may be sown at different times throughout the year, whenever the land is moist, either by irrigation or rainfall. Artichokes are of doubtful value. We have never found anyone who continued to grow them long. Of course, on good, deep land, with irrigation, nothing can be better than alfalfa as supplementary to hill range during the summer season.
Winter Forage.