Show 5 < ALFALFA NOT KNOWN Place for Crop In Northwestern States Not Understood Now Ascertained That It Can Be Grown With Reasonable Degree De-gree of Profit In Northwestern North-western States Tho place for alfalfa In the northwestern north-western states Is not well understood says Dakota Farmer Until recently the belief was almost universal that It could not bo grown in Minnesota the Dakotas and on the bench land of tho mountain states with any considerable con-siderable degree of certainty or profit It is now being ascertained that It may be grpwn satisfactorily on much of the land In Minnesota and tho Dakotas Da-kotas It Is also being ascertained that It can be successfully grown on the bench lands of tho northwestern mountain states While alfalfa can be grown In many areas of the eastern Dakotas and In Minnesota It will never occupy so important a place relatively an In areas farther west This arises from the fact first that it Is less needed as a forage crop In the areas first named and second bocauso In these it is more likely to be Injured by tho winter season This does not mean that It is much liable to bo destroyed by the winter but it does moan that It will In sotno instances be thus Injured In-jured by the severity of the cold when suddenly exposed by the removal re-moval of the snort Such winter killing kill-ing is very infrequent in areas farther west In tho areas first named clover in several of its varieties IB a sure crop and whore It is it Is probably more valuable than alfalfa all things considered con-sidered It comes much more frequently fre-quently into the rotation and where two crops of common red clover can be grown in succession In one season the yield will probably be as much na from two cuttings of alfalfa In such instances the valuo of the alfalfa Is largely dependent on the superior continuity con-tinuity in its growth Tho clover lands are also more easily broken than the alfalfa lands when this maybe may-be desired The fact remains nevertheless that the western half of both Dakotas and the bench lands of Montana Wyoming Wyom-ing and other mountain states have much less adaptation to tho growing of cloverthan to the growing of alfalfa al-falfa The former calls for more moisture to grow them at their best than the latter The aim should be therefore to make the alfalfa plant one of tho chief forage crops that will bo grown In all those areas Too much must not bo expected from tho alfalfa During many seasons there will be only ono cutting During other seasons there may bo two It was thought ono time that the attempt to grow alfalfa was hopeless Under the conditions < that are now being be-ing considered It was thought that these areas were f too cold and too dry It Is now being ascertained that It la not too cold The people of the Canadian Cana-dian northwes are now beginning to get busy growing this plant It IS also being found thai alfalfa can bo established on land whore the normal rainfall runs between 12 and 1C Inches per y onr Those results are being accomplished with such alfalfas alfal-fas as we have Others are hoing introduced which nay prove more resistant re-sistant to cold and drought than the varieties we now have = Professor Hanson of the Squth Dakota experiment experi-ment station comes to us with tho tidings thatIn nusia alfalfa Is successfully suc-cessfully grown In some of its varieties va-rieties farther north and under more severe conditions than are found In theca northwestern states |