Lot No. 9 was to be fitted for alfalfa as soon as the season would
permit. First, it must receive a heavy dressing of manure, to be
ploughed under. The ordinary plough was to be followed in this case by a
subsoiler, to stir the earth as deep as possible. When the seed was
sown, the land was to receive five hundred pounds an acre of high-grade
fertilizer, and one hundred pounds an acre of infected soil.
The peculiar bacterium that thrives on congenial alfalfa soil is
essential to the highest development of the plant. Without its presence
the grass fails in its chief function--the storing of nitrogen--and
makes but poor growth. When the alfalfa bacteria are abundant, the plant
flourishes and gathers nitrogen in knobs and bunches in its roots and in
the joints of its stems.
I sent to a very successful alfalfa grower in Ohio for a thousand pounds
of soil from one of his fields, to vaccinate my field with. This is not
always necessary,--indeed, it rarely is, for alfalfa seed usually carry
enough bacteria to inoculate favorable soils; but I wished to see if
this infected soil would improve mine.
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