Red Clover Seed and Its Impurities (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Red Clover Seed and Its Impurities

Seeding to clover should follow a cleaning crop that has had deep and thorough cultivation. The suppression of perennial weeds should precede the making of a meadow. Such a location as a clayey hillside, where the soil is apt to become hard after heavy rains, may be greatly improved by a light top-dressing of rotted stable manure. Which should be incorporated with the surface soil by harrowing.

Nurse crops are designed, in part at least, for the protection of seedling plants of grasses and clovers. When all the soil moisture does not have to be saved for the meadow, a light nurse crop screens the seedlings from the burning heat of the sun; it helps to suppress weeds until the clover has sufficient vigour to compete with them; and it may give a return from the land while the meadow is developing. Wheat or barley is generally considered most satisfactory as a nurse crop. Oats, even with thin seeding, are later to mature and apt to make too much shade. Standing in a nurse crop, one should be able at any time during the growing season to see the young plants ten or twelve feet away. The nurse crop should be ready to harvest as soon as the clever commences to develop new shoots or branches from the crown.

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