Place In The Rotation
Category:
ALFALFA
Japan clover can scarcely be classed as a
rotation plant in the strict sense of the term, since it more frequently
comes into the fields, as it were, spontaneously, and owing to the
uncommon degree to which it has the power of re-seeding itself, it is
frequently grown and grazed for successive years on the land upon which
it has been allowed thus to grow. Nevertheless, since it is a nitrogen
gatherer, when it has fertilized the land sufficiently by bringing to it
a supply of nitrogen and by putting humus into it, crops should follow
such as require much of growth to grow them in best form. Such are
cotton, corn and the small cereal grains. Owing to its power to grow on
worn and even on abandoned soils, and to crowd weeds that grow on them,
on such soils it comes in between the cessation of cultivation and the
resumption of the same. It frequently grows as a volunteer crop along
with Johnson grass, and where it comes, it tends to crowd grasses of but
little value, as brown sage.
Where pasture is desired winter and summer, it should be quite possible
in some localities to obtain it by sowing such crops annually, as winter
oats and sand vetches (Vicia villosa) every autumn, and the seed of
Japan clover on the same. The crops first named would provide winter and
spring grazing, and the clover, summer and autumn grazing. The clovers
and the vetches would both aid in fertilizing the land.
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Preparing The SoilPrevious:
Soils
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