Oxford Democrat. [volume] (Paris, Me.) 1833-1933, 1911-09-26
A Case of Clover Seeding.
DON'T WASTE EXPENSIVE SEED ON LAND
NOT PROPERLY PREPARED.

Agricultural papers and institute
speakers persistsntly tell US to SOW
plenty of clover, and thus restore on
rundown farms. This advice is good II
a sense, bot il must be remembered tha
clover will not grow on poor land, snt
it is sheer waste of costly seed to SOW
clover on land not in a good state Of fer
tility. see our neighbors persistentll
sowing clover every year, yet few o.
them cut much clover hay. When th'
land is in a good state of tilth, after corr
or roots, the clover does grow, but is
mostly killed the first winter. This
winter killing is not caused wholly BY
the frost, but is mostly caused by tramp
ing and psstdring in the fall, and tramp
ing after frost appears is much worse
Grazing the new growth of clover in the
fall is q chief reason for winter killing.
But sowing clover on poor land with the
expectation of increasing its fertility is
idle. It will not grow to amount to a
row of pins on poor land.
Here is a way we grow a fine crop OF
clover. The field hao been cropped
probably for fifty years, and no one re-
members seeing anybody ever drawing a
load of manure or fertilizer on this field.
The two best crops of oats, succeeding
each other, did not average quite twenty
bushels to the acre. This land received
light seeding of timothy, with some
clover, in few places, mostly for ex
perimentation, with the last seeding for
oats, intending to "let it out" to pasture
and abandon the field for cropping.
The timothy grew sparsely, but there
were no clover blossoms the next sum-
mer worth mentioning. The field was
left in pasture. A neighbor, seeing the
field partially abandoned, wished to pur-
chase, believing he could acquire 1t al
small cost. That fall the field was
plougbed fairly deep and the following
winter was top dressed with manure
hauled from town, a distance of eight
miles. As soon in the spring as 1t was
dry enough TO harrow and cultivate IL
was worked twice with disk harrow,
By spring tooth, and we drill
ed in seven pecks OF oats and sowed six
quarts of red clover and two quarts OF
timothy seed to each acre. The oats
were cut while still quite green with
field during the fall. The following year
there was a splendid stand of clover
Now, a field that produces fine stand
Of clover will produce good crop of al
most any kind. But to get the ground
to produce a good crop of clover re-
1uires fertility and physical condition
equal to the requirements of a crop of
W heat or potatoes.
But the advantage of getting the land
in condition to produce crop OF clover
over other crops is that once you have
the land so that it will produce good
crop of clover, that clover crop is self
II will not only feed itself,
but will feed the crop TO follow. That
is more than a crop of wheat, corn or
oats will do. Kedzie claims, or did
claim, that crop of clover leaves enough
nitrogen for four average crops and pot
ash for more than six average crops OF
W heat. The roots of the clover are
worth as much or more than the tops
for fertilizing. They weigh as much as
the tops. This has been demonstrated
by Lawes, by Voelcker, by Roberts and
by several of our experiment stations.
The clover will sometimes not only
give US a crop of hay, but crop of seed,
and leave in the soil crop of roots worth
as much as the tops for fertilizer. If
we feed the hay and return the manure
to the soil, we have in good clover
crop and the sod enough phosphoric
acid for crop of corn and wheat to fol-
low. Is it not, therefore, worth while
to manure and till the land to enable US
to get crop of the ''red plumed COM
mander in chief of the msnurial forces?
The point striven for in this article Is
to induce our friends to strive first of
all to obtain crop of clover, and to ma
nure and till primarily for the clover
crop. Seek first to get crop of clover.
and all these other crops will come to
you.-J. A. Macdonald, Ottawa, Ont, in
Tribune Farmer.