When absolutely necessary, the seed crop may be harvested with the field
mower, as ordinarily used, but when it is thus harvested, the crop
should be cut with all promptness as soon as it is ready. It must then
be raked into winrows and lifted as hay is usually lifted. All the work
of harvesting should be done in those portions of the day when the heads
will break off less freely, and when at the same time the dew is not
resting on the seed plants in any considerable degree. When, however, a
crop of alsike is thus harvested for seed, many heads will break off,
howsoever careful the workmen may be.
The seed may be threshed at once or stored. Storing under a roof is
preferable to storing in the stack, but the latter method will suffice,
if the tops of the stacks are well protected with a covering of marsh
hay or of some other suitable material. When the seed is not threshed at
once it is usual to defer threshing until cold weather, as with medium
red clover, as then the seed is much more easily removed from the seed
pod. Ordinarily, the work can best be done by clover hullers, the same
as are used in threshing medium red and mammoth clover, but grain
separators, with certain attachments, will now do this work in good
form. Much care should be exercised in winnowing the seed. It ought to
be so cleaned that it will grade as No. 1, and so bring the highest
current price. Due care in this matter will make the major part of even
ordinary seed bring the best price.
=Renewing.=--When the stand of the alsike is but partial, as, for
instance, when young plants have failed, or partially so, on the high
land, and are sufficiently plentiful on the lower land, a full stand may
sometimes be secured by simply scattering seed where it is needed so
late in the fall that it will not sprout before winter, covering with
the harrow and then top dressing with farmyard manure well decomposed.
But where the winters are so mild that the clover might be sprouted
during some warm spell followed by severe weather, the seed should not
be sown then.
On certain soils, as those naturally moist and porous, it may be
possible so to renew alsike clover that it will produce hay or pasture
crops almost indefinitely, by simply allowing some heads to seed every
year and fall to the ground. In meadows, this may be done by not
grazing after the hay has been harvested until other heads have formed
and ripened. A limited number of these will thus form after the crop has
been mown for hay. If the crop has been cut for seed, many heads will in
any event be left upon the ground. The same result will follow when
grazing the crop, if grazing is made to cease at the right time, and for
a period long enough to allow a considerable number of heads to mature.
This method of renewal will not prove a complete success on all soils,
as, for instance, on those very stiff and very light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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