'Cbe Conservative.
Kentucky blue-grass , timothy , redtop ,
and red clover seed , five pounds of each
to the acre. It all came up well , but
everything except the blue-grass and
alfalfa has disappeared. This field ,
after fourteen years , has such a perfect
mat of blue-grass between the alfalfa
plants some of which are a rod apart
and some very close together , showing
the seed was not well mixed that the
alfalfa plants have never been able to
multiply themselves to any extent by
the scattering of the seed , as they do
quite frequently on other portions of
the farm where there is no turf to pre
vent the seed from rooting. On this
twenty acres , the yield from which I
have above referred to , there was pas
tured on an average this past summer
twenty-five cows. The people who
rented of me wanted to got all they
could out of it , and I counted at one
time thirty-seven head of grown stock
upon it. I have farmed in the Con
necticut valley , and grown a ton and a
quarter of tobacco to the acre ; have
raised fruit trees on the slopes of the
Sierra Nevadas , and am familiar with
the soils of Ohio , Michigan , and the
blue-grass region of Kentucky , but I
have never seen such results in the way
of vegetable growth as this field of
alfalfa and blue-grass presents. Here
is a field fourteen years old which hi a
year of drought furnished me a revenue
of over $500 , or $25 per acre , from two
cuttings , the second having been
destroyed , as above mentioned , by hail ,
) ' just as it was ready to out. The yield
1 in 1898 was greater than I have ever
known it before ; having had an unus
ually wet spring , the blue-grass grew
as high as the alfalfa. From this and
other fields I am convinced that we
have a wonderful blue-grass country in
central Nebraska , even superior to the
far-famed of Ken
- blue-grass region
tucky.
Do Away With Bloat.
Hereafter , when the alfalfa is old
enough so its roots are relying for their
support entirely upon the soil below
that which the blue-grass roots will
penetrate , I intend sowing blue-gross
upon all my alfalfa fields , as this will
do away with the danger of bloat that
has heretofore existed in pasturing al
falfa , having observed that the cattle
eat liberally of the blue-grass before
eating any of the alfalfa , which pre
vents them from consuming sufficient
of the latter to injurethemselves. .
Also , when we have a wet spring and a
heavy crop of blue-grass , we invariably
get a much finer quality of hay than
when wo have alfalfa alone.
Hill Lands.
\ Interesting as this piece of alfalfa has
been with its blue-grass accompani
ment , its enormous yield without any
manure or other fertilizer , I think my
experience with the hill land , lying al
least 100 feet above the water-level ,
has been more so. In the spring of 1896
I broke fifty acres of what has always
been termed the "semi-arid hills" of
Nebraska those hills which border the
Platte valley for more than 300 miles.
It was my intention to backset this land
that fall and subsoil it , but was pre
vented from doing so by the early
freezing of the ground. This was done
in the spring of 1897 , and , as it proved ,
at a very unfortunate time , as there
was no rain after the laud was fitted
and sown for more than six weeks ,
which made the prospect of a good al
falfa catch in the hills quite gloomy.
At last , however , early in June , the
rains came , and in a few days there was
such a color upon those hills as had
never been seen there before , and this
season , in spite of an unusually dry
summer , I out one ton to the acre and
then had four months of good pastur
ing.
Being curious to ascertain to how
great a depth the roots of these plants
had penetrated , I took my spade , and
found them more than five feet long , on
an average. I now judge that those
hills , in place of being worthless , are
better worth fifty dollars per acre to
grow crops upon , with alfalfa as a
pioneer crop , than most of the best se
curities before the public are worth the
prices quoted , leaving a very wide
margin so far as the per cent , of income
is concerned in favor of the alfalfa land.
Another advantage in having these
hills in alfalfa is that since they were
seeded there has been no washing of
the hillsides , no matter how violent the
storm , all the moisture finding its way
into the ground and being conserved.
As a Fertilizer.
Not the least valuable feature of the
alfalfa plant , to my mind , is its great
fertilizing power , its value when
ploughed under for subsequent crops be
ing almost beyond belief. In this con
nection I desire to refer you to that
painstaking and exhaustive experi
menter , Prof. Edward B. Voorhees , of
the New Jersey Experiment Station
who found that "the amount of plan !
food collected from one acre and its
value on the basis of the prices per
pound of plant food for the years 1887 ,
1888 , 1889 , " was as follows :
You will please bear in mind thai
these prices for nitrogen , potash and
phosphoric acid were what the fertilizer
manufacturers had to pay for them a
that time without the profits which
they added to them when they sold
them to the farmers in the form of for
ilizors. This is an average of $71.15
per acre. How many farmers in this
vestorn country have laud which is
worth on the market $71.15 per acre , to
ay nothing of adding that amount , in
fertilizer each year ? Yet I know of an
eastern farmer who expends more than
this amount per acre each year to fer
tilize his land for a single crop. As our
farms are our capital , it would ba well
10 bear in mind that when the plant
food in our soil is exhausted by our
careless methods of tillage the cultiva-
; ion of alfalfa , red clover or some other
legume will be imperative , and that ,
too , in a careful rotation , or wo shall bo
compelled to deplete our pockets as do
our eastern brothers in the purchase of
that plant food which now exists in the
soil of most of our farms in rich abund
ance. In the words of Professor Veer
hees , "Alfalfa acts in the hands of the
farmer as an agent for rendering lockod-
up capital available. "
The Orchard.
To give you an idea of what the al
falfa roots are worth to the soil when
decayed and the plant food available I
will tell you of my orchard. I set
about four acres of trees in the spring
of 1897 on a part of the twelve acres of
land seeded to alfalfa in 1898 and
broken out in 1896 , and at the same
time the same week set , a few rods
away , exactly the same kind of trees of
the same size and age. This fall I
measured the trunks of the trees and
found that some of those set upon the
alfalfa laud were three inches in diam
eter while none of those set on the other
piece of land were one-half that size.
The soil of each piece was the same
previous to the sowing of the alfalfa.
Subsoiling.
As to subsoiling , ! am not able to state
from my experiments exactly how
much better the soil will retain moist
ure because of the large quantities of
humus which will inevitably be stored
up in the soil , but this I do know , that
the roots which are below the eight or
ton inches in which the ordinary crops
find their support have thoroughly
honeycombed the soil to a considerable
depth , and not only fill in with humus ,
but , as it decays , leave a deep porous
subsoil , or reservoir , for the storage of
all moisture that is precipitated upon
it ; and no bettor definition has ever
been given of alfalfa along this line
than the one which your unusually
capable secretary gave it in his quarter
ly report on this wonderful plant ,
where he speaks of it as the "silent .
subsoiler. " It is , indeed , such a sub-
soiler as no implement maker will over
be able to produce.
Speaking of subsoiliug , without de
siring to advertise anybody's agricul
tural implements , I think it to them 7tr ,
terest of every farmer to learn * that , , ,
there is a plough called the "Secretary , " , f
f
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