We had best admit at the outset that most of the old fields of the South need enrichment to make them produce good alfalfa. And the best way to enrich them is with liberal coatings of stable manures. Few farmers are aware of the great value of manures. They enrich far in excess of the actual potash phosphorus and nitrogen carried. Liberal dressings, then, of barnyard manure, applied before it has leached in rain, is the best preparation for alfalfa sowing. If one has not enough manure to prepare the soil for ten acres let him attempt to sow but five. If he can’t manure five let him content himself with two. Two acres of vigorous alfalfa will yield as much as ten acres of sickly, thin stuff on unprepared soil. And the two acres will make forage enough to make a further supply of manure, so that he can next season enrich added acres and sow them to alfalfa. But while stable manure is the best thing and really almost indispensable to success in growing alfalfa upon old Southern fields, it can be greatly helped by being re-enforced by mineral fertilizers. “Floats,” or finely-ground phosphatic rock not treated with sulphuric acid, is a very cheap supply of phosphorus. This phosphorus is not available when applied to some soils deficient in humus. But when floats are mixed with stable manure in some way the phosphorus is made available and the plants can get it. Therefore, the wise farmer sprinkles his stables with floats which absorb the ammonia and makes the stable smell sweet, and when the manure is applied its value has been almost doubled. Stable manure fortified with floats is the thing to apply to the soil to make alfalfa grow. This manure may be applied to a preceding crop of corn or tobacco, if it is applied heavily enough so that there is a large residue left. Or it may be applied directly before the ground is plowed for alfalfa. This is a safe way. It may be turned under or harrowed in or disked in or left to lie on the surface through the winter and the land plowed in the early spring. Just get it over the land in any way and as soon as convenient after it is made; it will do the work. Apply as much as twenty-five tons to the acre and more if you have it. This will be a help, but in strong Southern clays there is no need to fear putting on an abundance; it will not leach away, and the more humus you get in that soil the better your alfalfa will be. Do not be discouraged by this information; you can afford to use the manure to start a crop that maintains itself and makes such a large amount of forage that will, if fed and the manure saved, in turn enrich yet other fields for many years. Late in winter or early in spring the land may be plowed. It should be broken deep and as soon as the land is ready to work, it should be harrowed to a good seed bed. Alfalfa wants a firm seed bed, so that the little rootlets find an unbroken way down into the moist earth beneath.