ask for it, together with some food the little animals like. The cotton and the food are put into a barrel of water. In a few days the water turns milky, and is then swarming with the little creatures.
The farmer lowers a sack full of clover, alfalfa, peas or bean seeds into the water, dries and sows them. The bacteria begin to grow as soon as the seeds do, and set up their little nitrate factories on the roots. If you can't grow sweet peas in your garden, or white clover on your lawn, ask Uncle Sam in Washington to help you. He will send you some of the cotton, and you can use the milky water for sprinkling.
It isn't a bit of use to sow these bacteria with any other kind of plants than pod-bearers. And here's another funny thing. When clovers and their cousins are grown in soil rich in nitrates, they do not take the trouble to make this plant food at all. You may pull up many a fine clover or alfalfa plant and find no swellings on the roots at all.
You have heard the story of Bruce and the spider, haven't you? No matter how many times the web is torn down the spider spins another one. Some animals will give up, if disturbed too often. So will some plants. The clovers are like spiders. They try, try again to grow seeds. If left alone they ripen their seeds from the first blossoms and the plant dies. But if clover is cut when in blossom, but before the seeds ripen, it will spring up and blossom again, and even the third time. Farmers can cut two and even three crops of clover from one field, in a single season. Then, if he lets the seed ripen, the alfalfa and some clovers, will re-seed the field, or spring up from the roots the next season.
It really seems as if those wise little clover heads might be nodding in the wind as if to say that they knew a thing or two, doesn't it? (See Legume, Fruit, Clover, Shamrock, Alfalfa, Pea, Peanut, Bean, Indigo, Liquorice, Locust, Nitrogen-gathering crops.)
