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Show ALFALFA CROP ON DRY LAND Colorado Farmer Relates How He Secured Se-cured Good Stand Without Use of Irrigation. In the spring of 1909 I had two small patches of native sod plowed on my ranch, writes L. W. Cunningham In Campbell's Scientific Farmer. After the sod was plowed and harrowed, it was sowed to alfalfa. I had little confidence con-fidence in the result, but was agreeably agree-ably surprised when I visited the ranch in the late summer to find in the magnificent crop of weeds, a good stand of alfalfa. I had the weeds cut, but not raked. They should, I think, have been cut earlier. In the early part of March of this year. 1 again visited the ranch. The snow uad disappeared and the ground was free from frost except in the draws. For the purpose of determining the depth of moisture In the soil, I prospected pros-pected my alfalfa patches with pick and shovel. While engaged in this work I was amazed at the depth of the young alfalfa roots. My city neighbors know a great deal more about my reputation for veracity than they do about the habits of alfalfa, hence I concluded It was not wise to rely solely upon myunsupported word as to what I had discovered In my alfalfa patch, so I procured a long handled shovel or spade and set about (with the help of another) to go to the bottom of things, with the result that I came into town with alfalfa plants having roots 36 Inches in length, and at that they were broken. It was Impossible to go to the very extremity of any root. If alfalfa roots attain a length of three feet in one summer on sod ground, I feel convinced con-vinced that If sown on ground plowed much deeper and free from weeds (as mine was not), even better results will follow. The great depth to which these roots have and will penetrate pene-trate must of necessity greatly fa-ciliate fa-ciliate the percolation and storage of water in this land to a greater depth than ever before. I found these roots had penetrated two feet below the moisture line and into ground that was almost as solid as a grindstone. It would be an interesting problem to figure out the number of tons of fertilizing material this underground crop of roots contains fertilizing material ma-terial without a superior. I do not anticipate a yield from my alfalfa equal to that from Irrigated lands, but I do expect every acre upon which i succeed in establishing a good growth of alfalfa to be worth much more than twice what the adjoining acre now in buffalo grass cost me. Moreover, when I shall finally again crop this land, I confidently expect an Increase In grain production sufficient to repay the expense of seeding the land to alfalfa and repay what the land originally cost me. |