Ordinarily no special treatment is required after seeding and the clover goes into the winter without any further handling. If the growth is so rank that there is danger of the plants being too succulent to survive the winter, the tops can be reduced by light grazing with small animals, such as calves, sheep, or chickens, or by mowing with the cutter bar of the mowing machine set high. If the stand is backward, it may be stimulated by a light application of nitrate of soda. It is said that a thin stand can be thickened by grazing lightly with sheep, as the grazing induces heavier stooling. The aim should be to carry the clover into the winter with well-hardened leafy stems and with a well-established root system to withstand heaving out in the spring. In fields which are to be saved for seed a wise precaution is to go over them early in the spring and chop out the weeds. If wild onion and other weeds are chopped off in April, they do not make enough growth by May to contaminate the seed crop. =MALADIES.= The only disease seriously affecting crimson clover is the clover stem-rot, root-rot, or wilt, a disease resembling the stem-rot, or wilt, of lettuce and other plants. This disease is prevalent in nearly all the crimson-clover States and sometimes does considerable damage. The stem-rot affects the clover at all seasons, but is more noticeable in the spring, when it sometimes causes large spots of clover suddenly to wilt and fall. Occasionally an entire field is affected, but the disease is most prevalent in low, rich spots. Examination of the plants discloses a rotting off or decay of the stems close to the ground, followed immediately by the appearance on the stems of small black lumps, or sclerotia, about the size of clover seed. These sclerotia are a means of spreading the disease and are often harvested in the hay or in the seed crop. The only known remedy for the stem-rot is to cease growing clover or alfalfa on an infested field for three or four years, substituting cowpeas or soy beans. Seed from fields known to be infested should, of course, be avoided. No insects are known to affect crimson clover seriously, nor are weeds of great importance in clover planted on clean fields. When planted in cultivated crops or in poorly prepared ground crimson clover is often seriously damaged by a rank growth of chickweed, knawel (moss weed), winter cress, and other winter-growing annuals. WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1920 * * * * * =Transcriber Note= Minor typos have been corrected. Illustrations were moved to prevent splitting paragraphs. Produced from files generously made available by USDA through The Internet Archive. All resultant materials are placed in the Public Domain. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of USDA Farmers' Bulletin No. 1142: Growing Crimson Clover, by Leonard Wheeler Kephart