Fertilizing clover plot

crowskee

5 year old buck +
I have a 2nd year clover plot containing med red, white dutch, jumbo ladino and alice. Last fall I fertilized it with 0-25-25 but this year there is no nitrogen free fertilizer to be found.
Would 13-13-13 get me by this year or do I really need to keep the nitrogen out of the plot?
 
throw some chicory in there.
 
Forgot to mention. There is chicory and alfalfa in the plot as well.
 
Throw down some rye if you're worried about it, or put it on after the ground freezes if it won't wash down the hill in spring. Throw some gypsum in there too if you're buying nutrients.
 
I have a 2nd year clover plot containing med red, white dutch, jumbo ladino and alice. Last fall I fertilized it with 0-25-25 but this year there is no nitrogen free fertilizer to be found.
Would 13-13-13 get me by this year or do I really need to keep the nitrogen out of the plot?

I would never put nitrogen on an established clover plot. You’re just asking for a weed take over and the end of the plot.
 
I think we're a little wrong about what's been saying about clover for years......I think it does benefit from adding a little nitrogen. I think what's "just asking for grass to take over" is trying to grow a clover monoculture and starving the soil of carbon....
 
I spread a little urea on my clover a couple weeks ago while I was giving some slow growing Sweeds a boost.
 
I think the issue is sorta' left hanging. Knowing when and where to use nitrogen to fertilizer clover is key - and I'm not sure there's much science to help confirm our assumptions. As we all know, legumes suck nitrogen out of the air, somehow, and those things called root nodules are critical for the process.
New, establishing clover has none - no nodules. A little nitrogen can help. Is it always necessary? I don't know. I suppose it depends on the conditions at the time the above ground part of the clover plant exceeds the size of the root, a time where nodules are developing.

And that leads to a necessary discussion about rhizobial bacteria who's presence is required for nodule formation and nitrogen fixation. Being a living organism, it reacts differently in different environmental situations, and different strains perform differently in a given (harsh?) environment. Who, what why, when and where is a fascinating area for exploration - if you are really hungry for edgy mental stimulation or are an insomniac!

So, we hope and assume the need for the addition of chemical N is not required, that nature will take care of it. Yes, there are trade-offs. All plants LOVE N! So, if you add it, the question has to be will the benefit outweigh the cost? When you get tired of exploring the performance of different strains of rhizobial bacteria under harsh conditions, then you can try to uncover the cost - benefit equation related to adding nitrogen fertilizer to clover!

But, yes, there is a place for it.....
 
Back to goals and objective...I keep going there don't I?...

As farmerdan says, when you plant clover, it initially has no nodules to effectively fix N from the air. But do you care?

If you are using an annual clover or a short-lived perennial clover or even a longer-live perennial clover and you plan to just keep it for a couple years, who cares that adding N might cause grasses to infiltrate the field a bit quicker? On the other hand, if I'm planting a persistent clover in one of many small harvest plots distributed across the farm and I want to get close to 10 years out of it, even though I'm quite weed tolerant, I want to start with best practices that limit how quick weeds get started. That includes things like fall planting with a thick WR nurse crops and mowing it back as frequently as needed to release the clover during the first year. I would not want to fertilize this with N to give it a "jump start". Why? In a few years, that clover will be producing all the N it needs with leftover for other plants. I don't need a "Jump Start" because, I'll be rotating the other harvest plots in and out of clover, so many of them will be providing attraction this year. I'm focused on the longer term goal of getting many years out of a single planting with low maintenance since the plots are small and distributed and equipment transport to the plot takes almost as much time as maintaining it. An what was in that field before? If there was clover, there are plenty of rhizobial bacteria in the soil and probably plenty of left-over N, even if I'm rotating from an N seeking crop the previous year.

I find legumes seem to respond to K more than P or N.

I don't think I've ever intentionally added commercial N fertilizer to any food plot. I have used MAP to achieve my P requirements and it does have a small percentage of N in it. In recent years, I've not used any fertilizer. I find that if I need to use N, there are better choices for crop mixes that do well without the added N. I love mixing legumes and rotating them. I've abandon soybeans in favor of a mix of sunn hemp, buckwheat, and grain sorghum for my summer stress period the last few years. In the fall, I rotate into a cover crop of PTT, CC, and WR. Deer seem to be doing fine with these, and these plants seem to support each other in terms of nutrient cycling. None of these mixes require high fertility. This is in addition to the small harvest plots which I keep in persistent perennial clover.

So, in the end, the use of N should be driven by your goals for the plot.

Thanks,

Jack
 
I am going to go a different route. If that is all you have then I say go for it. You are broadcasting it so there are different thoughts on how much of the N will actually get into the soil profile.

Having said that here are a couple considerations. Fertilize when the clover is dry as it can burn plants. Depending on how you have fertilized in the past, how much actual N are we talking? 10 pounds per acre or less? Weed control, grasses are usually the easiest to control with spraying.

Ag is finding there are benefits to adding N to many crops that once believe “made enough” on their own. Because while they do store N, usually the storage is for short terms and not season long usage.


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The plot in question looked like this in the spring
20200415_153820.jpg
now it looks like this20200822_154650.jpg

I just sprayed it with clethodim for the first time ever 3 days ago. I hope that will take the grass out of it. But being that I'm already fighting grass I'll stick with 0-25-25 because I found a place today that had some in stock.
 
The plot in question looked like this in the spring
View attachment 31228
now it looks like thisView attachment 31229

I just sprayed it with clethodim for the first time ever 3 days ago. I hope that will take the grass out of it. But being that I'm already fighting grass I'll stick with 0-25-25 because I found a place today that had some in stock.

First, you could have 5 times as much grass and weeds in that plot and it would make no difference to deer. No need for cleth or fert. Just mow when the evenings get cool and the fall rain begins to favor the cool season clover over the warm season stuff.

Many of my clover fields that are several years old have so many weeds and grasses during the summer, you almost wouldn't know there was clover in them unless you got down on you hands and knees. For well established plots like this, I mow a few weeks before the season (sometimes a little earlier if there is a specific problematic weed that I can cut just before it goes to seed). This releases the clover and just the time nature is favoring it. I'm amazed at how quickly the clover takes the field back.

Each year there will be a few more weeds and eventually you will need to rotate to an N seeking crop, but depending on the persistence of the clover you choose, deer will use the field for many years. I seem to get more pictures of more mature bucks using my older, weedier clover fields in the summer than my younger, cleaner clover fields. Does and fawns seem to use them pretty much equally. I'm not sure if bucks use the weedier fields a bit more in spite of the weeds or because of them. Weeds do shade the clover from the hot summer sun and many weeds are better deer food than the clover itself. In my area in VA, Durana work very well and is both persistent and drought resistant. In dry years it goes dormant for a short period during the summer, but in many years, it never goes dormant here. If I use best practices to establish it, with no herbicide beyond the pre-plant burndown, I get 7 to 10 years out of a Durana field. I mow the nurse crop of WR as needed that first spring after the fall plant to release it, but after that, I typically just mow once in the fall before the season.

Your field looks great in both pics!

Thanks,

Jack
 
Just a thought but if you use 24db, cleth, and frost seed every winter how long could you actually keep a clover plot going?
 
Just a thought but if you use 24db, cleth, and frost seed every winter how long could you actually keep a clover plot going?
A pretty plot, about 5 years. Imox may lengthen that. A plot like Jacks with weeds and grass that deer don’t mind....?..... maybe 20.
I’ve got a field that has to be 10 years old. Lots of grass, weeds and even switch grass. After I mow in September it looks pretty good.
 
So y'all set me straight here......I thought the N being produced in the nodules was not actually available until after the clover terminates.....at which point the N is then released.....No???
 
Just a thought but if you use 24db, cleth, and frost seed every winter how long could you actually keep a clover plot going?

Yes, at a very high cost in money and time you can extend the life of a plot by a few years, but nature abhors a monoculture. When a monoculture is growing year after year, all of the plants are extracting the same nutrients out of the soil (micro as well as macro) and putting the same nutrients back into the soil. Eventually the soil just wears out. You can fight it with herbicides year after year and try to make things look pretty like on the TV food plot shows if you want but it is a loosing battle.

There are even tricks I play with herbicides on occasion if I don't have time to rotate when I really should. If I take an old well established clover plot, say 6 or 7 years old for ladino, that is very weedy in the fall, instead of mowing it, I can spray it with 1 qt/ac glyphosate with rain in the forecast. That will kill all the grasses and many broadleaf weeds and top kill the clover. I can then drill something like radish and/or Winter Rye into the field. The radish and/or WR will germinate and start growing and then the clover will bounce back from the well established root system. I've posted this pic many times before:

01814a24-edac-4ef4-aa57-8aa9e41d13bd.jpg


The radish is an annual and will die over the winter. That field will look perfect the next spring with nothing but clover in it. But, it is still a 6 or 7 year old field that has been sucking out the same nutrients each year and fixing N back into the soil making conditions for grasses and other N seeking crops. I'll get another 3 years or so out of the field but it will get grassy much faster than the original field. But this does give me an extra couple years to find the time to rotate.

When it is time to rotate, I'll typically plant buckwheat in the spring and follow it with some fall mix that has a brassica and grain component. I'll go back to the buckwheat the next summer and then plant my clover with the nurse crop of WR the next fall. By then the soil is ready to support clover again. By tolerating weeds, we are actually encouraging diversity of plants in the soil improving the quality of the clover that is there and some of the weeds will be great deer food.

Gly is much less expensive and I'm only using it once in the life of the plot. I probably would not do this in gly resistant areas and I only use this technique when I don't have time to rotate when needed.

Thanks,

Jack
 
So y'all set me straight here......I thought the N being produced in the nodules was not actually available until after the clover terminates.....at which point the N is then released.....No???

Yes, the N becomes available with the clover dies, but individual plants are always dying and the seed they produce is reseeding new clover. As I understand it, the release of N is slowly building over time. When the clover is finally terminated is when you get the largest availability of gly to other plants. That is why I use N seeking crops during a rotation out of clover and back in.

For crowskee, another technique is to mix chicory with clover. They tend to complement each other and can be managed similarly with mowing. I used this technique when I used ladino. Since switched to Durana, I stopped using it just based on cost effectiveness. Chicory is deep rooted and can perform during a drought when ladino goes dormant. I found that the chicory did not last long with Durana. The Durana out-competed it faster and the Chicory would only last a few years. With the durana going dormant for such a short period, if at all, the benefit of the chicory dropped. In the end, I could not justify the cost with Durana, but depending on the clover you are using, it is a good diversity technique.

Thanks,

Jack
 
Yes, at a very high cost in money and time you can extend the life of a plot by a few years, but nature abhors a monoculture. When a monoculture is growing year after year, all of the plants are extracting the same nutrients out of the soil (micro as well as macro) and putting the same nutrients back into the soil. Eventually the soil just wears out. You can fight it with herbicides year after year and try to make things look pretty like on the TV food plot shows if you want but it is a loosing battle.

There are even tricks I play with herbicides on occasion if I don't have time to rotate when I really should. If I take an old well established clover plot, say 6 or 7 years old for ladino, that is very weedy in the fall, instead of mowing it, I can spray it with 1 qt/ac glyphosate with rain in the forecast. That will kill all the grasses and many broadleaf weeds and top kill the clover. I can then drill something like radish and/or Winter Rye into the field. The radish and/or WR will germinate and start growing and then the clover will bounce back from the well established root system. I've posted this pic many times before:

01814a24-edac-4ef4-aa57-8aa9e41d13bd.jpg


The radish is an annual and will die over the winter. That field will look perfect the next spring with nothing but clover in it. But, it is still a 6 or 7 year old field that has been sucking out the same nutrients each year and fixing N back into the soil making conditions for grasses and other N seeking crops. I'll get another 3 years or so out of the field but it will get grassy much faster than the original field. But this does give me an extra couple years to find the time to rotate.

When it is time to rotate, I'll typically plant buckwheat in the spring and follow it with some fall mix that has a brassica and grain component. I'll go back to the buckwheat the next summer and then plant my clover with the nurse crop of WR the next fall. By then the soil is ready to support clover again. By tolerating weeds, we are actually encouraging diversity of plants in the soil improving the quality of the clover that is there and some of the weeds will be great deer food.

Gly is much less expensive and I'm only using it once in the life of the plot. I probably would not do this in gly resistant areas and I only use this technique when I don't have time to rotate when needed.

Thanks,

Jack

That seems to work pretty good. How long had it been from the time you sprayed with Gly until that picture was taken?
 
That seems to work pretty good. How long had it been from the time you sprayed with Gly until that picture was taken?

Timing is key. It is important to do it when you have rain in the forecast and the weather is beginning to favor the cool season clover. They pic is from quite a few years ago. It has been a while since I've used that technique. Judging from the size of the radish, I'd guess 3 or 4 weeks.

Thanks,

Jack
 
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