Securing Seed
Category:
ALFALFA
White clover is a great seed-producing plant. The
season for bloom covers a period relatively long, and the number of
blossoms produced under favorable conditions on a given area is very
large. But when seed crops are to be produced with regularity, it is
necessary that moisture can be depended upon in sufficient supply in the
spring months to produce a vigorous growth in the plants. Such a climate
is found in the Puget Sound country and in a less degree for some
distance south from Lakes Huron and Superior. In areas which can be
irrigated, it is not imperative that the climate shall be thus moist.
Such areas, therefore, may be looked upon as possessed of superior
adaptation for the growth of seed crops of white clover.
The areas are limited, however, in which seed crops are grown in the
United States; so limited are they that it has been found very difficult
to locate them. Wood County in Central Wisconsin grows a considerable
quantity, and some counties northward in the same State, and probably
also some parts of Northern Michigan, will grow seed equally well.
Where a seed crop is grown every care should be exercised to have it
free from foul weeds. The aim should be to grow it on clean land.
Sometimes, however, the seed is self-sown; that is, it comes into the
land without being sown, but even in such areas it is safer to sow 3
pounds of seed per acre in the early spring along with a nurse crop. The
best seed crops in Wisconsin and Michigan are grown on a reasonably
stiff clay soil. To get a full crop of seed, it should be pastured for a
time in the spring, or the crop should be run over with the mower about
June 1st, setting the mower bar so as to cut 3 or 4 inches high. No harm
will follow if some of the tops of the clover should be cut off. The
grass and weeds thus cut are usually left on the ground, but sometimes
it may be necessary to remove them. In a short time the field should be
one mass of bloom.
The crop is ready for being harvested when the bulk of the heads have
turned a dark brown and when the bulk of them have assumed a reddish
brown tint, notwithstanding that some of the later heads may still be
in full flower. Vigorous crops may be cut with the self-rake reaper set
to cut low, otherwise many of the heads will not be gathered. To
facilitate this process, the ground should be made quite smooth even
before sowing the seed. But the seed crop is more commonly cut with the
field mower, to the cutter bar of which a galvanized platform is bolted,
the sides of which are about 6 inches high. From this the clover is
raked off into bunches with a rake. These bunches should not be large,
and since nearly all the heads in them will point upward, they should
not be turned over if rained on, but simply lifted up with a suitable
fork and moved on to other ground.
The seed crop cures quickly. It may be drawn and threshed at once, or it
may be stacked and threshed when convenient. If stacked, a goodly supply
of old hay or straw should be put next the ground, and much care should
be taken to protect the clover by finishing off the stack carefully with
some kind of grass or hay that will shed the rain easily. Since the
heads are very small and numerous, and since, as with all clovers, they
break off easily when ripe, much promptness and care should be exercised
in harvesting the seed crop. The best machine for threshing a seed so
small is the clover huller.
The yields of seed will run all the way from less than 3 bushels per
acre to 5 bushels, and some crops have been harvested in Wisconsin which
gave 7 bushels per acre. Four bushels would probably be about an average
yield. As the price is usually relatively high compared with other
clovers, the seed from white clover would be quite remunerative were it
not that in a dry season the yield is disappointing. In some instances
two crops are grown in succession; in others, one crop is reaped. The
land is then sown to barley the next year, and the following year clover
seed may be reaped again without sowing a second time. Usually, after
two successive crops of seed have been cut, blue grass crowds the
clover.
It should be possible to grow prodigious crops of white clover in
certain of the northern Rocky Mountain valleys, as, for instance, in
Montana and Washington, where the conditions for the application of
water to grow the plants and of withholding the same when ripening the
seed are completely under the control of the husbandman. The soils in
these valleys, as previously intimated, have high adaptation for growing
white clover.
Next:
RenewingPrevious:
Pasturing
Viewed: 549
Informational.ca
