Clovers and How to Grow Them

by Thomas Shaw

It may be proper to state here that the lands which grow hardwood timber will usually grow clover. By hardwood timber is meant such trees as maple, beech, birch, oak, elm, basswood, butternut and walnut. Where forests are found comprising one or more varieties of these trees anywhere on this continent, and especially comprising several of them, the conclusion is safe that medium red clover will grow, or, at least, can be grown, on such soils. If a considerable sprinkling of pine trees is found in the same, the indications are not changed in consequence. Where the forest is largely composed of maple and birch, excellent crops of clover may be looked for when the land has been cleared. But because of what has been said, the conclusion must not be reached that clover will not grow well under some conditions where soft woods abound, but rather that where the former abound the indications of suitability for clover production are more certain than where soft timbers abound.

Place in the Rotation.—Medium red clover may be made to precede or to follow almost any crop that is grown upon the farm. Notwithstanding, there are certain crops which it precedes or follows with much more advantage than others. Since it brings nitrogen to the soil from the air and deposits the same for the benefit of the crops that immediately follow, it is advantageous to plant such crops after it as require much nitrogen to make them productive, as, for instance, wheat. Since, through the medium of its roots, it stores the ground with humus, such crops should come after it as feed generously on humus, as, for instance, corn and potatoes. And since it tends to lessen weed growth through smothering, it may with advantage be followed by crops for which a clean seed bed is specially advantageous, as flax. It may, therefore, be followed with much advantage by wheat, oats or barley, corn and sorghum in all their varieties, flax, potatoes, field roots, vegetables and such small fruits as strawberries. Where wheat is a success it is usually first grown among the small cereal grains after clover, since it is less able to flourish under the conditions which become decreasingly favorable in the years that follow the breaking up of the clover. Whether wheat or flax, corn or potatoes should immediately follow the growing of clover, should be determined in great part by the immediate necessity for growing one or the other of these crops, but also to some extent by the crops that are to follow them.

Clover may follow such crops as require cultivation while they are growing, and of a character that will clean the soil. This means that it may with advantage be made to follow corn, sorghum, potatoes or field roots. It may also follow the summer fallow bare, or producing crops for being plowed under where these come into the rotation. Of course, since clover can to a considerable extent supply its own nitrogen, it may be successfully grown on lands that are not clean, and that may not possess high fertility, but when thus sown the nurse crop with which it is usually sown is not likely to succeed well, because of the presence of weeds in it, and from the same cause the quality of the first of the clover is likely to be much impaired. The conditions of the time of sowing are also less favorable for getting a stand of the seed.

There is probably no rotation in which clover may be grown with more advantage than when it is made to alternate with corn or potatoes and some small cereal grains, as wheat or oats, growing each crop for but one season. Of course the clover must be sown with the grain and harvested the following year, taking from it two cuttings. In no other form of rotation, perhaps, can clover be used to better advantage, nor would there seem to be any other way in which land may be made to produce abundantly for so large a term of years without fertilization other than that given to the soil by the clover. It would fully supply the needs of the crops alternating with it in the line of humus, and also in that of nitrogen. In time the supply of phosphoric acid and potash might run low, but not for a long term of years. The cultivation given to the corn and potatoes would keep the land clean. Fortunate is the neighborhood in which a rotation may be practised, and fortunate are the tillers of the soil who are in a position to adopt it.

Medium red clover may be followed with much advantage by certain catch crops sown at various times through the season of growth. It may be pastured in the spring for several weeks, and the land then plowed and sowed with millet or rape, or planted with corn, sorghum, late potatoes, or certain vegetables, or it may be allowed to grow for several weeks and then plowed, to be followed by one or the other of these crops. It may also be harvested for hay in time to follow it with millet or rape for pasture, and under some conditions with fodder corn. But when the stand of clover is good, it would usually be profitable to utilize the clover for food rather than the crops mentioned, since doing so would involve but little labor and outlay. After the second cutting for the season, winter rye may be grown as a catch crop by growing it as a pasture crop.

Preparing the Soil.—Speaking in a general way, it would be correct to say that it would not be easy to get soil in too friable a condition for the advantageous reception of medium red clover seed. In other words, it does not often happen that soils are in too fine tilth to sow seed upon them without such fineness resulting in positive benefit to the plants. The exceptions would be clays of fine texture in climates subject to rainfalls so heavy as to produce impaction. On the other hand, the hazard would be even greater to sow clover on these soils when in a cloddy condition. The rootlets would not then be able to penetrate the soil with sufficient ease to find enough food and moisture to properly nourish them. Some soils are naturally friable, and in these a tilth sufficiently fine can be realized ordinarily with but little labor. Other soils, as stiff clays, frequently require much labor to bring them into the condition required. Usually, however, if sufficient time elapses between the plowing of the land and the sowing of the seed, this work may be materially lessened by using the harrow and roller judiciously soon after rainfall.

When preparing prairie soils so open that they will lift with the wind, the aim should be to firm them rather than to render them more open and porous; otherwise they will not retain sufficient moisture to properly sustain the young plants, if prolonged dry weather follows the sowing of the seed. Plowing such land in the autumn aids in securing such density. The same result follows summerfallowing the land or growing upon it a cultivated crop after the bare fallow, or after the cultivated crop has been harvested prior to the sowing of the clover seed, otherwise the desired firmness of the land will be lessened, and weed seeds will be brought to the surface, which will produce plants to the detriment of the clover. In preparing such lands for the seed, cultivation near the surface is preferable to plowing.

When the clover is sown late in the season, as is sometimes the case, in locations where the winters are comparatively mild, the ground may be made reasonably clean before the seed is sown, by stirring it occasionally at intervals before sowing the seed. This is done with some form of harrow or weeder, and, of course, subsequently to the plowing of the land.

Sowing.—The time for sowing clover seed is influenced considerably by the climatic conditions. Under some conditions it may be sown in the early autumn. It may be thus sown in the Southern States and with much likelihood that a stand will be secured, yet in some instances an inauspicious winter proves disastrous to the plants: all things considered, it is probably safer to sow clover in the South at that season than the spring, when vegetation is beginning to start. It may also succeed in some instances in areas well to the North when sown in the early autumn, providing snow covers the ground all the winter, but should the snow fail to come the subsequent winter, or fail to lie when it does come, the clover plants would perish. The element of hazard, therefore, is too great in northerly areas to justify sowing the seed thus. But on the bench lands of the mountain valleys there may be instances in which the seed may be sown so late in the autumn that it will not sprout before winter sets in, but lies in the soil ready to utilize the moisture, so all important in those areas, as soon as the earliest growth begins in the spring.

The seed may be sown with no little assurance of success in the late summer. But this can only be done where moisture is reasonably plentiful from the time of sowing onward, and where the winters are not really severe. In some of the Central States this method of sowing may succeed reasonably well. Clover and timothy sown thus without any nurse crop will produce a full crop the next season. When the seed is sown thus, it may, of course, be made to follow a crop grown on the land the same season. It may also insure a crop the following season, when the clover seed sown the spring previously may for some reason have failed.