It is seen that plowing for alfalfa just preceding the seeding is not recommended. Plowing leaves the sub-surface too loose, thus depriving the roots of a sufficiently firm footing and making a full sowing more liable to harm from freezing and thawing, and the spring sowing to harm from a dry summer. The necessity of the most perfect surface conditions cannot be to often emphasized, and this too includes considerable compactness rather than a too light or ashy condition. There must be no clods, no stiff and stubborn humps.
If alfalfa is to follow clover, and to be seeded in the fall, the sod should be broken early after the clover is harvested and each day’s plowing harrowed that day; then the field disked and cross-disked and harrowed again. After that it should be disked, lapping half, every ten or fifteen days until time for seeding. Alfalfa may follow timothy if the sod is not too old and stubborn, and it may be treated the same as clover sod.
INTRODUCE BACTERIA BY PREPARATORY SOWING
Another form of preparation followed by many successful growers, men who do not complain about alfalfa not doing well “here,” is the sowing of a few pounds of alfalfa seed on the field two or three years before it is intended to sow for a permanent crop. Mr. Joseph E. Wing, of central western Ohio, a widely known farmer, stockman, and writer on matters agricultural, uses alfalfa in a regular rotation, and two years before he is ready to sow it on a given field as a main crop, sows clover and timothy along with two or three pounds of alfalfa seed, for a pasture crop. Thus the bacteria are introduced, and when the pasture is plowed for the full sowing of alfalfa, the disking and harrowing that follow distribute the bacteria throughout the soil, and the probabilities of a good stand are greatly enhanced. He sometimes sows two or three pounds of alfalfa seed to the acre with a wheat crop two years before he is to sow the field entirely to alfalfa. Another, in a state where the experiment station director still declares alfalfa-raising to be doubtful, writes that he has not had a failure in a decade, and his plan is to precede alfalfa with winter wheat, sowing a little alfalfa seed with the wheat, probably three pounds to the acre, and the next fall after giving the land a thorough preparation he sows fifteen pounds of alfalfa seed to the acre. Another reports pleasing results in two different fields by sowing in the spring five pounds of alfalfa seed with clover; in two years the alfalfa stood thick on the ground, having crowded out the clover. If these plans introduce the bacteria into the soil, it may be wondered why it would not be equally helpful to sow two or three pounds of alfalfa seed per acre with the oats or millet in the spring, preparatory to the thorough seeding to alfalfa in the fall.
Another man, whose profit in raising alfalfa has been marked, reports that his soil is very waxy and hard to deal with. He has met this trouble by listing his ground in the fall and leaving it thus open for hard freezing throughout the winter. He then disks and cross-disks in the spring, putting the soil in fine tilth, and sowing millet as a preparatory crop. He has occasionally sowed alfalfa in the spring, following the fall listing and later freezing of his ground.
ALL CROPS DEMAND CONDITIONS
Alfalfa, like corn and cotton, demands certain conditions of the soil and certain constituents in that soil. Every crop demands its certain foods. All crops except alfalfa and the other legumes obtain practically all their food, including nitrogen, from the soil. The latter crops use nitrogen but get it from the air. Alfalfa takes nitrogen from the soil only during the first few months of its growth, and thereafter not only takes its own necessary supply from the air, but a large surplus which it stores in the soil, available for whatever crop may follow. Other crops take much nitrogen from the soil, but contribute nothing to its enrichment.
SPRING OR FALL SOWING—WHICH?
This has been a much argued question with experimenters. Possibly it will be found to be of minor importance in itself, depending more upon other conditions than the season. From the northern tier of states many reports favor spring sowing, yet from each come letters in favor of fall sowing. Several experiment stations in the South are in favor of spring sowing, yet report satisfactory results from fall seeding. It seems pretty well established, however, that fall sowing is safer in the central latitude states, say including Ohio, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Utah, and states within the same parallels.
In other states prevailing opinions favor spring sowing. Nevertheless, when all conditions are understood, fall sowing seems likely to become the established practice throughout the United States. This is in line with the system for the more staple crops and common rotation; it gives opportunity to bring the ground into better condition; the preparation and sowing come at the most convenient season, and one of relatively greater leisure; there is less interruption by unfavorable weather; the soil, responding more readily to surface cultivation, permits the work to be done with less danger of surface water retarding normal root development, and the annual weeds being dead they cannot interfere with the first growth of the alfalfa. Sown in the fall, with time to secure some growth for winter protection, alfalfa will be ready to respond to the first call of spring, and for the mower early in June. Moreover, if it fails from freezing or other cause, little crop-time is lost. The farmer has but to disk and harrow in April or early May, and sow half as much seed as he sowed in the fall, and he will have prospect of a cutting in eighty or ninety days, at an expenditure of but few pounds of seed and a little labor.