LUCERNE. Meclicagb. There are several varieties of Medicago (medick) cultivated as M. saliva, or lucerne; M. lupulina, or black medick or nonsuch; M. maculata, or spotted medick; and M. denticulata, or denticulated medick. The first only is useful in the United States. Lucerne, called generally Alfalfa in the United States, is a most valuable forage plant for warm climates. It is extensively cultivated in California and should be in the South. It delights in a loose, deep, sandy soil, but also does well in dry, deep, loams, rooting deeply, and after being established stands any amount of drought. It will not thrive well in the climate of the North, but'from Kentucky south it is a most valuable forage crop. Given rich, clean, and dry land, it will, after the first season, furnish an enormous amount of forage for farm stock, who learn to eat it with avidity. The roots are sought after by hogs who follow them to great depths. In climates that do not freeze severely; as Cali fornia and the South, it may be cut five or six times a year. When it begins to fail at the end of several years, it may be again renewed by plowing and harrowing the ground thoroughly, when it will immediately spring up from the deep roots. Of its culture South, Rev. C. S. Howard says: On many accounts, lucerne is one of the most bountiful gifts of Nature to the Southern planter. No grass or forage plant in cultivation at the North will yield nearly as much hay as lucerne at the South. In good seasons, and on land sufficiently rich, it can be cut four or five times during the year. An acre of good lucerne will afford hay and cut green food for five horses the whole year. Ten acres will supply fifty head of plantation horses. This can be cut down in a day with a mowing machine. How unwise in the planter, then, to damage his corn by pulling fodder—that most irksome and senseless work of the plantation. A few acres of lucerne would save him this labor, and the tedious time occupied in pulling fodder could be employed in the improvement of his land. It is useless to attempt the cultivation of lucerne on poor land. It will live, but it will not be profitable.. There are certain indispensa ble requisites in the cultivation of lucerne. The ground must be good upland; it must be made very rich; it can not be made too rich. If the ground is as carefully prepared for it as an asparagus bed, the lucerne will spring almost with the rapidity (after cutting) of asparagus. It must be very clean. When the lucerne is young it is delicate, and may be smothered with the natural weeds and grasses of a foul soil. Land which has been in cotton, worked very late, if made sufficiently rich, is in a good state of pre paration for lucerne. The manure put upon it must be free from the seeds of weeds; hence, a mixture of guano and phosphatic manures would be an excellent application. On this farm, land designed for lucerne is put in drilled turnips well manured and worked. The turnips are folded with live stock—that is, they are fed on the 'ground, which thus gets all the solid and liquid excrements of the animals, and becomes very rich, and is also very clean. Great depth of cultivation is necessary in preparaticin of the soil for lucerne. If the ground was broken up i with a four-horse plow, and in the same furrow a two-horse subsoil plow w as run, stirring it eighteen or twenty inches, it would be to the advantage of the subsequent crops of lucerne.
Ten pounds of seed are required for an acre, sowed broadcast. Drilling is unnecessary if the ground be properly prepared and the lucerne is not pastured. If the preparation has been imperfect, and the lucerne is to be occasionally pastured, it is better to drill at such a distance as will allow a narrow plow to be passed between the rows when the surface requires stirring. Either early in autumn or early in February are good seasons for sowing lucerne. The seed should be lightly harrowed in, and then the surface should be .rolled. Lucerne lasts a great number of years, the roots ultimately becoming as large as a small carrot. It should be top dressed every third year with some manure free from the seeds of weeds. Ashes are very suit able for it. The lucerne field should be as near as possible to the stables, as work-horses, during the spring and summer, should be fed with it in a green or wilted state. As lucerne is much earlier than red clover, it will be found a useful adjunct in hog raising, Hogs are very fond of it, and will thrive on it in the spring, when it is cut green and thrown to them. This extended notice of lucerne is given because it is remark ably adapted to our soil and climate, and is, beyond all comparison, the most valuable plant for hay-making and soiling to the southern planter. It thrives in no part of Europe with greater vigor than it does in the Southern States. The following interesting statement by a gentle man of California, will be of interest: A freshet cut away the bank of a creek, exposing a section of an alfalfa-field. The roots of the plant had penetrated to a depth of from twelve to twenty feet, and were exposed by the washing away of the bank from the surface to the water-line. The diameter of the root at the crown on the surface varies from an eighth to half an inch. They taper, gradually to the lower end, from which a cluster of roots or feeders put out. In the section exposed the roots were close together, but entirely disconnected, each one growing straight through the soil to the water, and pro ducing on the surface a luxuriant branch of alfalfa, which keeps green the year round. A farmer near San Jose sowed three and a half acres with alfalfa in February, and in September it was producing feed enough to sustain six mulch cows. Up to that time it had been cut twice. He thinks that ten cows may be sup ported when the grass has become fully estab lished. A gentleman who has noted the cultivation of this plant in California for twenty years has in no instance seen it succeed without irrigation except upon alluvial soils, such as are found in the low flats along the margins of rivers. The conditions of successful cultivation are a friable, mellow, moist soil, easily penetrated by the long tap-roots, which should find a permanent supply of water at a depth of not more than six to eight, and not less than three feet; the land should be thoroughly plowed and the surface-crust well pulverized, and about fifteen pounds of clean seed sown per acre and brushed in, but not covered too deep. The sowing should be just before a rain-fall. (See Supplement.)