It may be proper to state here that the lands which grow hardwood timber
will usually grow clover. By hardwood timber is meant such trees as
maple, beech, birch, oak, elm, basswood, butternut and walnut. Where
forests are found comprising one or more varieties of these trees
anywhere on this continent, and especially comprising several of them,
the conclusion is safe that medium red clover will grow, or, at least,
can be grown, on such soils. If a considerable sprinkling of pine trees
is found in the same, the indications are not changed in consequence.
Where the forest is largely composed of maple and birch, excellent crops
of clover may be looked for when the land has been cleared. But because
of what has been said, the conclusion must not be reached that clover
will not grow well under some conditions where soft woods abound, but
rather that where the former abound the indications of suitability for
clover production are more certain than where soft timbers abound.
=Place in the Rotation.=--Medium red clover may be made to precede or to
follow almost any crop that is grown upon the farm. Notwithstanding,
there are certain crops which it precedes or follows with much more
advantage than others. Since it brings nitrogen to the soil from the air
and deposits the same for the benefit of the crops that immediately
follow, it is advantageous to plant such crops after it as require much
nitrogen to make them productive, as, for instance, wheat. Since,
through the medium of its roots, it stores the ground with humus, such
crops should come after it as feed generously on humus, as, for
instance, corn and potatoes. And since it tends to lessen weed growth
through smothering, it may with advantage be followed by crops for which
a clean seed bed is specially advantageous, as flax. It may, therefore,
be followed with much advantage by wheat, oats or barley, corn and
sorghum in all their varieties, flax, potatoes, field roots, vegetables
and such small fruits as strawberries. Where wheat is a success it is
usually first grown among the small cereal grains after clover, since it
is less able to flourish under the conditions which become decreasingly
favorable in the years that follow the breaking up of the clover.
Whether wheat or flax, corn or potatoes should immediately follow the
growing of clover, should be determined in great part by the immediate
necessity for growing one or the other of these crops, but also to some
extent by the crops that are to follow them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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