One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered

by Edward J. Wickson

What is the proper time to sow alfalfa? Some advocate fall and others spring sowing. What seasons are given for each sowing?

We shall undoubtedly soon get to sowing alfalfa all the year round except in the short season of sharp frosts and cold wet ground in November, December and January. If you can get a good start in September and October, all right; if not, wait until February and March, according to the season. Where it is never very cold or wet, sow whenever moisture is right. There never can be any rule about it, for localities will differ.

Foxtail and Alfalfa.

Will foxtail choke out and exterminate alfalfa? Some fields look as though the foxtail had crowded the alfalfa out, but I hold that the alfalfa died from some other cause and the foxtail merely took its place.

Foxtail will not choke out alfalfa, providing, soil and moisture conditions are right for the latter, and a good stand of plant has been secured. If anything is wrong with the alfalfa, the foxtail will be on the alert to take advantage of it. You will always have foxtail with you, and considerable quantities of it, perhaps, in the first cutting, because foxtail will grow at a lower temperature than alfalfa, and, therefore, will keep very busy during the rainy season, while the alfalfa is more or less dormant, but as the heat increases, if the soil is good and moisture ample, the alfalfa will put the foxtail out of sight until the following winter invites it to make another aggressive growth. Therefore, we answer that alfalfa does not die from foxtail, but from some condition unfavorable to the alfalfa, which must be sought in the soil, or in the moisture supply, or traced back to bad seed, and a poor stand at the beginning.

Which Alfalfa is Best?

I have in Stanislaus county ten acres of Arabian alfalfa, which was sown the first week in April this year. It was clipped in July and irrigated. It is now about 14 inches high, but looks sickly, turns white at the tips, and some dies down. There are several places here with the Arabian alfalfa on them and with the same trouble, while the ordinary variety is looking fine by the side of it.

Arabian alfalfa usually makes a good show at first and begins to run out afterward. It does not seem to be so long-lived and satisfactory as the common variety. With this prospect ahead of you, according to present experience, it would seem to be desirable to plow the crop in and seed again with the common variety, or with the Turkestan, which is proving the most satisfactory of the recently introduced varieties.

Fall Sowing of Alfalfa.

We have summer-fallowed land which we know will grow good alfalfa, and as we have just had four inches of rainfall upon it, we were wondering if we could not plow the twenty acres and get a stand upon it in time to stand the cold weather this winter. Do you think this is practicable?