LUCERNE.
This admirable plant is not so well known as it should be. It resembles a clover, and is used for green food for cattle, for which it is peculiarly adapted both by its nutriciousness and its endurance of repeated cuttings. Care must be taken to put it upon the right soil and it will bear mowing four or five times a year, and will last for ten years—with care five years more! The soil for it is a deep, a very deep vegetable loam, which drains itself perfectly and yet without becoming dry. It has a fusiform root, which, as the plant grows older, extends downward from four to six feet. The subsoil is regarded by Flemish farmers as of more importance than the surface soil. A stiff, cold, clay, a wet and springy soil; a hard, cold, wet subsoil of any sort, is unfavorable to it. It should therefore be tried on warm, dry, and rich soils, than which none are better than our sandy alluvions or bottom lands. During its first year it requires some care, to keep down weeds, as it is easily smothered; but when once established it rules the soil in defiance of anything. If the ground is very clean, it may be sown broadcast; but it is always safer and often necessary to drill it. Authors vary as to the quantity of seed required per acre, Von Thaër says six to eight pounds, while his French editor says from sixteen to eighteen. We suppose that from ten to twelve pounds will be a fair amount.
When the plants are well established they will be improved by severe harrowing every spring, a sharp harrow being used until the field looks as if it were plowed.
Lucerne has been tried by a few cultivators in the West, but by more in the East, with great success, and it has this peculiar excellence, that, thanks to its very long roots, it withstands our severest droughts; indeed our hottest and dryest summers are those which it seems to delight in.