Place In The Rotation
Category:
ALFALFA
The place for mammoth clover in the rotation
is much the same as for the medium red variety. (See page 70.) It may,
therefore, be best sown on a clean soil; that is to say, on a soil which
has grown a crop the previous season that has called for clean
cultivation, as, for instance, corn, potatoes, sorghum, or one or the
other of the non-saccharine sorghums, field beans, soy beans, cow peas
and field roots. But it is not so necessary that it shall be made to
follow either kind of beans or cow peas as the other crops named, since
these have already gathered nitrogen, which is more needed by leguminous
crops. This clover should rather be grown in rotations where more
nitrogen is wanted, when the soil will profit by increased supplies of
humus, and where strong plants are wanted, the root growth of which will
have the effect of rendering the cultivated portion of the soil more
friable when stiff and more retentive when sandy, and that will have the
effect of opening up many little channels in the subsoil when the roots
decay, through which an excess of surface water may percolate into the
subsoil. It may precede such crops as revel in humus and that feed
ravenously on nitrogen. These include all the small cereals, corn and
all the sorghums, rape, and all kinds of garden vegetables and
strawberries. It is, of course, better adapted to short than to long
rotations, because of the limited duration of the life of the plants.
The length of the rotation will, of course, depend upon various
contingencies. Frequently, the clover is cropped or pastured but one
season following the year on which the seed was sown, whatsoever the
character of the crops that precede or follow it, but in more instances,
probably, it is used as crop or pasture for two years. When timothy is
sown along with this clover the pasturing or cropping may continue for
one or more seasons longer before the ground is broken, but in such
instances the timothy will have consumed much or all of the nitrogen put
into the soil by the clover, save what has escaped in the drainage
water. One of the best rotations in which to sow mammoth clover, as also
the medium red, is the following: Sow in a nurse crop of rye, wheat,
oats or barley, as the case may be, in order that it may be pastured or
cut for hay the following season, and then follow with a crop of corn or
potatoes. This in turn is followed by one or another of the small
grains. This constitutes a three years' rotation, but in the case of
mammoth clover it is frequently lengthened to four years. The year
following the sowing of the clover, it is cut for hay or for seed, and
the next year it is pastured with or without a top-dressing of farmyard
manure. This rotation meets with considerable favor in certain areas of
Wisconsin, well adapted to the growth of the plant.
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