Very little sweet clover thus far has been grown in mixtures with other crops. A few farmers have sown red clover and sweet clover together, but such a mixture has no advantage over sweet clover seeded alone for hay, as sweet clover should be cut at least two Weeks before the red clover is ready to harvest. Sweet clover is being seeded to some extent on native prairie sod in the Northwest, where it is claimed it adds greatly to the value of the native grasses for pasturage. A thin seeding of sweet clover is often desired in bluegrass pastures on this account. One of the best pastures in eastern Iowa consists of a mixture of bluegrass, timothy, and sweet clover. The Mississippi Agricultural Experiment Station recommends a mixture of Johnson grass and sweet clover. In this mixture the first cutting will consist of almost pure sweet clover, while the second and third cutting's will be a mixture of those plants. A number of southern farmer have had good success in seeding sweet clover on Bermuda-grass sod.
The New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station has obtained excellent results from a mixture of Dwarf Essex rape and sweet clover, and also by the addition of soy beans to this mixture. It was found that by seeding 6 pounds of rape and 10 pounds of sweet clover per acre an abundance of nutritious pasturage was produced and that pigs preferred this mixture to alfalfa. When soy beans were added it was seeded at the rate of 1 bushel of soy beans, 6 pounds of Dwarf Essex rape, and 18 pounds of sweet clover. The soy beans were drilled by themselves, and the rape and sweet clover were mixed and seeded with a press drill. Brood sows made a gain of from three-fourths to 1 pound a day during July on this mixture without additional feed and gave unusual evidence of thrift and vigor.
Fig. 11.—A cornfield, showing the effect of fall and spring plowing int killing sweet clover that had made but one year's growth. The portion of the field at the left was plowed in the autumn, while that at the right was plowed the following spring, after the plants had started growth. The corn is 4 inches high.
[ERADICATION OF SWEET CLOVER.]
Some farmers hesitate to plant sweet clover on their farms for fear they will have difficulty in eradicating it when the fields are planted to other crops. The results obtained annually by hundreds of farmers are sufficient proof that there is no foundation for such fear; in fact, farmers are experiencing much difficulty in cutting the first crop the second season so high that the plants will not be killed. The new crop of sweet clover, unlike that of red clover and alfalfa, must come from the buds left on the stubble, so when the plants are cut below these buds they will be killed. As sweet clover is a biennial, the plants die as soon as the seed crop is produced.