[Illustration: A Heavy Grass Sod in New York.]
Prejudice against Timothy.--Timothy, among the grasses, is especially in disrepute as a soil-builder, and yet its value is great. The belief that timothy is hard on land is based upon observation of bad treatment of this grass. There is a common custom of seeding land down to timothy when it ceases to have sufficient available plant-food for a profitable tilled crop, and usually this is the third year after a sod has been broken. The seeding is made with a grain crop that needs all the commercial fertilizer that may chance to be used. Clover may be seeded also, and on a majority of farms it fails to thrive when sown. If clover does grow, the succeeding crop of timothy may be heavy. If clover does not grow, the timothy is not so heavy. The seeding to grass is made partly because a tilled crop would not pay, and partly because a hay crop is needed. It comes in where other crops cannot come with profit, and it produces fairly well, or very well, the first year it occupies the ground by itself. With little or no aid from manure or commercial fertilizer, it adds much to the supply of organic matter in the soil, and it produces a hay crop that may be made into manure or converted into cash.
If the sod were broken the following spring, giving to the soil all the after-math and the mass of roots, its reputation with us would be far better than it is. This would be true even if it had received little fertilizer when seeded or during its existence as a sod, not taking into account any manure spread upon it during the winter previous to its breaking for corn. But the rule is not to break a grass sod when it is fairly heavy. The years of mowing are arranged in the crop-rotation to provide for as many harvests as promise immediate profit. On some land this is two years, and not infrequently it is three. Where farms are difficult of tillage, it is a common practice to let timothy stand until the sod is so thin that the yield of hay is hardly worth the cost of harvesting. Then the thin remnant of sod is broken for corn or other grain, and the poor physical condition of the soil and the low state of available fertility lead to the assertion that timothy is hard on the soil. This is a fair statement of the treatment of this plant on most farms.