Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1900-05-05
W KAN, MAY 5. 1900.

! lent horse feed, but is too rich in pro-
tein to give the results alone.
mo successful hog raiser can afford
to be without alfalfa hay; it has been
used in western Kansas for winter
/ ing stock hogs, and has been proven
to possess great value in balancing
the grain rations for fattening hogs.
At the Kansas station it produced
pork at the rate of 86S pounds per ton.
/ At three cents per pound for the pork,
! the alfalfa was worth mere than S26
/ per ton.
| ''Alfalfa hay is excellent feed for
/ sheep, especially for old ewes and
their lambs. The sheep feeding in
dustry in Colorado is largely depend
ent upon alfalfa.
ALFALFA AS HONEY PLANT
"Alfalfa is the greatest honey plant
known to modern agriculture. 1t is
superior to white clover, sweet clover
or buckwheat, and under favorable
conditions gives a honey flow from
June to October. The farmers in the
alfalfa growing districts are only be-
ginning to appreciate their opportu-
mites for honey propuction. There
were 81, 722 stands of bees in Kansas
in 1899. The average honey product
per stand was little over thirteen
pounds for the whole state Eighteen
eastern counties, where alfalfa is
scarcely known, produced only 10
pounds of honey per stand. These
eighteen counties contained about 3S
per cent of the bees of the state ;,
91S stands-and produced only % per
cent of the honey.
''Dr. E. G. Franklin and Mr. ]. G.
Swayze of the Kansas State universi-
ty have made chemical and physical
tests of alfalfa honey in comparison
with five other common sorts, and the
alfalfa honey leads the list in every
desirable quality.
zone hundred pounds per hive is no
uncommon yield of favorable seasons
in alfalfa regions. Excessively dry,
hot waather or excessively cool, wet
weather are conditions detrimental
to good yield of honey Many flow
ers do not secrete It's nectar until be-
ginning to wither.
FERTILIzING vALUA OF ALFALFA.
alfalfa is one of the greatest soil
renovators known. BY means of. lit
tie organisms called bacteria, which
inhabit nodules on its roots. it is ena-
bled to take up large quantities of
nitrogen gas from the atmosphere and
transform this into protein so much
priced as food for our domestic ami
mails Nitrogen is the most expensive
and the easiest exhausted plant food
in the soil. Although seven tons of
this gas rest upon every square yard
of Kansas soil in the form of air. vet
ordinary plants are wholly unable to
acquire nitrogen from this inexhaust-
ible supply. The legumes are excep-
tions to this general rule, and alfalfa
is one of the chief of these nitrogen
gathcrers- 1t also uses very large
quantities of mineral matters. as in
dicated earlier in this discussion, but
here it again serves as a gatherer of
plant food. Its long tap roots, which
have been known to reach depth of
forty or more feet, gather the miner
ais from the subterranean strata of
the soil and bring them up near the
surface, where other plants may use
them. The leaves which drop in the
regular course of handling the hay
add minerals to the surface /
soil worth Sl-15 per acre and nitrogen |
worth Sl0.JO. The roots rot when the |
plants die, and thus add humus to the /
soil. The stubble and roots of good |
stand years old will add fertilizing 1
TO the soil worth S35 per /
acre, if the plants are plowed up al 4
this time The growth and feeding |
of alfalfa on any farm in Kansas will /
furnish an absolute assurance against I
fertilizer venders for all time to come.
''The sale of alfalfa hay from the |
farm should not be encouraged under /
present market conditions. -Four or |
five dollars Il ton is only about half its 4
intrinsic worth as feed stuff. while /
the value of the fertilizers contained 1
in ton of the hay exceeds nine dol
lars. Not only does the alfalfa enrich