We purchased about 500 pounds of red and white clover seed, and 100 pounds of Sweet Yellow clover to sow on the pastures to supply the nitrogen in the soil.  The red clover adds nitrogen and nutritional forage to the hay, but tends to disappear within a couple of years.  The white clover, being low growing, adds little to the hay, except the nitrogen that it adds to the soil, but is far more persistent.  The Sweet Yellow clover grows very tall, and nothing beats it for fixing nitrogen in the soil, but animals don’t find it palatable in hay.  So we are planting that only in pasture, and land that we are in the process of reclaiming and will later till under.  We were delayed by weather but finally got to it all last week.

Planting Clover

Our fine biological woodsmen sourced this no-till seed drill, and that’s Healing Harvest adjunct, Kate, driving the tractor.

Unfortunately, several things interfered with the success of this project.

First, the owner of the seed drill had modified it so that instead of delivering the seed just behind the discs and just before the chains that cover the seed, it just dropped them on the ground well ahead of both.  Basically no different than just spreading it on the ground.  This would not be too bad with clover, which requires little if no cover, except that the tractor and drill is a very slow-moving way of broadcasting seed.

Next, we discovered that the drill wouldn’t work with my John Deere tractor, as it required rear hydraulics, which I do not have (yet).  So that necessitated getting the Healing Harvest Ford tractor, and relying on their time to spread the seed.

Next, as often happens in farming, the weather and other work interfered with the timely planting.  The clover needs to germinate well before the grass starts growing, or the grass will shade it out.  Just as we got half-way through, the grass started its spring growth spurt.  The grass grew six inches just in the week of work.  The discs on the drill mostly just ran over top of the grass, and the chains did likewise.  The seed fell down, and will probably germinate with all the rain we’ve had in the past week, but we’ll have to see if any of it survives.

We stopped with only about 70 acres overseeded, and another 70 or so to go.  I bought a broadcast seeder for the ATV that will be far more efficient in spreading clover seed.  I’ll plant this week the sweet yellow clover onto the bare fields being reclaimed and the leftover seed will be spread in late winter/early spring next year.

I’m kicking myself – I knew better.  Next year I’ll be better prepared and get that clover over-seeded much earlier.