Sweet Clover: Harvesting and Thrashing the Seed Crop — John Shaqi
Sweet Clover: Harvesting and Thrashing the Seed CropCoe, H. S.
Science
Sweet Clover: Harvesting and Thrashing the Seed Crop
Coe, H. S.
Sweet clover -- Harvesting
It is possible to hull from 90 to 95 per cent of the seed when
the proper adjustments are made and the plants are dry.
A clover-hulling attachment, which consists for the most part of
special sieves and a number of rows of corrugated concave teeth which
replace the ordinary concave teeth, has been used with success in
different sections of the country.
THE CLOVER HULLER.
As a rule, ordinary clover hullers do not handle sweet clover very
satisfactorily. Machines with cylinders larger than those commonly used
are giving fair satisfaction provided the plants do not make a large
growth, but even these machines have not been so successful as properly
adjusted and equipped grain separators. A clover huller will handle a 2
to 3 foot growth of sweet clover if the rows of thrashing concaves are
reduced and the plants are fed slowly to the machine. It will not hull
sweet clover as well as red clover, and it is very doubtful whether
it will hull more seed than a grain separator equipped with a hulling
attachment.
The manufacturer of at least one clover huller has designed special
rasps for the hulling cylinder and concaves of his machine, and these
rasps do better work than the ones ordinarily used for hulling red
clover.
It is the custom in some localities to run the sweet clover through a
thrashing machine without adjusting the concaves and then to run the
unhulled seed as delivered by the grain separator through a clover
huller. A fair quality of seed may be obtained by this process, but
it calls for much extra labor and time, and for this reason should be
avoided Whenever possible.
YIELDS OF SWEET-CLOVER SEED.
Many factors besides shattering influence the yield of sweet-clover
seed. As only those portions of the plants exposed directly to the
sunlight set seed abundantly, thin stands usually produce more seed to
the acre than heavy stands. When very heavy stands make a large growth,
seed is produced only on the upper 24 to 30 inches of the plants,
whereas with thinner stands it is produced on the lower branches as
well.
The quantity of moisture in the soil at the time the seed is maturing
is an important factor also. During hot, dry weather the plants may not
be able to absorb from the soil sufficient water to supply the excess
required by them for seed production. In this event many of the seed
pods will abort and fall when partly mature. Pods abort and fall in
a very short time, so that partly shriveled ones seldom are found on
the plants, although the extent of the aborting is shown by the number
of barren racemos. When such weather conditions prevail, the second
crop usually will produce a heavier yield than the first crop. This is
due for the most part to the inability of the large plants to obtain
sufficient water for seed production. The much smaller plants of the
second crop do not require as much moisture as the larger plants of the
first crop, as the vegetative growth is seldom more than half as much.
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