With the possible exception of alfalfa on fertile soils, no other
leguminous crop will furnish as much nutritious pasturage from early
spring until late fall as sweet clover when it is properly handled.
Live stock which have never been fed sweet clover may refuse to eat
it at first, but this distaste is easily overcome by turning them on
the pasture in the spring, as soon as the plants start growth (fig.
1). Many cases are on record where stock have preferred sweet clover
to other forage plants. The fact that it may be pastured earlier in
the spring than many forage plants and that it thrives throughout
the hot summer months makes it a valuable addition to the pastures
on many farms. Sweet clover is an especially valuable forage plant
for poor soils where other crops make but little growth, and it is
upon such soils that thousands of acres of this crop are furnishing
annually abundant pasturage for all kinds of live stock. In many
portions of the Middle West, where the conditions are similar to those
of southeastern Kansas, it bids fair to solve the serious pasturage
problems. Native pastures which will no longer provide more than a
scant living for a mature steer on 4 or 5 acres, when properly seeded
to sweet clover will produce sufficient forage to carry at least one
animal to the acre throughout the season. In addition to this, a crop
of hay or a seed crop may be harvested from a portion of the land when
it is so fenced that the stock may be confined to certain parts of
the field at specific times. Land which is too rough or too depleted
for cultivation, or permanent pastures which have become thin and
weedy, may be improved greatly by drilling in, after disking, a few
pounds of sweet-clover seed per acre. Not only will the sweet clover
add considerably to the quality and quantity of the pasturage but
the growth of the grasses will be improved by the addition of large
quantities of humus and nitrogen to the soil.
Sweet clover has proved to be an excellent pasture crop on many of the
best farms in the North-Central States. In this part of the country it
may be seeded alone and pastured from the middle or latter part of June
until frost, or it may be sown with grain and pastured after harvest.
When sweet clover has been seeded two years in succession on separate
fields, the field sown the first year may be pastured until the middle
of June, when the stock should be turned on the spring seeding. When
handled in this manner excellent pasturage is provided throughout the
summer, and a hay or seed crop may be harvested from the field seeded
the previous season.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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