The stand of alfalfa secured is sometimes thin and uneven. This may
arise from such causes as sowing too little seed; whether over-dry or
through the crowding of the young plants. When this happens, in many
situations it is quite practicable to thicken the stand by disking the
ground more or less, adding fresh seed, according to the need of the
crop, and then covering the seed thus added with the harrow. Such
renovation would be comparatively easy on clean land, were it not for
fact that the alfalfa plants already rooted overshadow the young plants,
always to their injury, and sometimes to their total destruction. The
spring will probably be the best season to attempt such renovation, but
there may be instances where the winters are not severe, in which autumn
seeding will succeed as well or better than spring seeding. Because of
the uncertainty of the results of such renovation, the aim should be so
to prepare the land and sow the seed that a good, thick stand will be
secured at the first.
Should the alfalfa fields be spotted, because in places the nurse crop
lodged and smothered the plants, or because excessive moisture destroyed
them on the lower portions of the field in an abnormally wet season,
the renewing process is simple indeed. It consists in disking those
parts so thoroughly as to destroy all vegetation that may have become
rooted on them, and sowing seed in the usual way without a nurse crop.
But should the low places be such as to hold an excess of water at any
time of the year under normal conditions for days in succession, even
though it should not rise to the surface, the attempts to make alfalfa
grow successfully on these will prove abortive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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