how to maintain my clover plot

EarthySpirit

5 year old buck +
IMG_3647.jpeg

Here is a pic of my clover field from yesterday. I want to maintain it for next year. What should I do this spring to keep it pure and strong this next spring/summer/fall? Thanks guys!!!!
 
HOw old is it and what kind of clovers?
 
I planted it last fall (2021), its Ladino.
What part of the country are you in? And did you plant anything else with it?
 
Central Kentucky. No, just clover.
 
If it's clover alone and you got a thick stand of clover, I recommend thunder herbicide. It's a generic of a preemergent and post emergent. Follow directions and you'll have a clean clover plot. Use clethodim for grass that comes up later in the summer.
 
Nothing...Just mow right before the season presuming it is a perennial clover Unless you have a specific noxious weed problem, skip the herbicides. Many broadleaf weeds are as good or better deer food as the clover. The weeds will help shade it from the summer heat. Deer don't need a clean field. Most clovers are cool season crops. The idea we need farm looking fields for deer is strange.

Start with objectives...Why did you plant the field. As part of a QDM program? For attraction during the season to improve hunting?

I like to start with a nice burn down in the fall and plant clover with a winter rye nurse crop. The first spring, I mow the WR to release the clover. Durana works well in your area and mine. After that, I only mow in the fall before the season. You couldn't even tell there was clover in my fields during the summer from a distance because of the weeds. After the fall mowing, when the nights get cool and we get fall rain, the clover bounces back and dominates the field.

Herbicides, short of a specific noxious weed problem, are a waste of time on clover. You are fighting a loosing battle. Nature abhors a monoculture. As the clover fixes more and more N into the soil, the field becomes more and more attractive to grasses. Eventually, they will win. With common ladino clover, I get 5 years or so out of a field before I need to rotate into an N seeking crop. With Durana, I get 7 to 10 years.

Thanks,

Jack
 
I'd plan to grow a grass with it all year, but pick ones you can control with mowing or winterkill. I can't help you with a holistic approach being that far south. A winter cereal in my neck of the woods can serve an entire year without gaps.
 
I’m in the do nothing but mow, overseed with rye this early fall and wait and see camp with clover that young.

But if you have to go the agent orange route…. clethodim smokes grass, 2,4-DB (butyrac) smokes broadleaf. And around year 5 raptor or IMox smokes both.

I’ve done all. But as I age, I kinda like some weeds in my clover and like nature taking its course.
 
Last edited:
Depending on your soil tests, you may want to add some 0-20-20. other than that, as others have said, I wouldn't do anything else right now.
 
Not a fan of herbicides, I just mow about once a month thru the spring and early summer (right before a rain).

Skip mowing in the heat of the summer months with no rain, it will stress and kill sections of it. Wait and then mow around Sept 1 right before the fall season and you'll have a great hunting plot. Could even add a cereal as others have mentioned at this point.

Fertilize and lime as called for in soil report and you'll get the best stand. Something low (or no) N like 6-28-28, 6-24-24, etc. depending on your current P/K values. Clover like many things we plant needs potash (0-0-60), etc. more than anything..
 
Last edited:
Clover loves some abuse. I take my disc to the clover and lightly scratch the surface(cutting lines in it) with the disc. The clover takes off after doing this. Then broadcasting some winter rye will help and gives the rye better germination with a little soil disturbance. The rye seems to find the cut-in lines when it rains and you usually wind up with the rye growing in rows where the disc cut the ground. Has been working very well for me for years here in Minnesota. Might as well throw some chicory in there too.
 
Here is a pic of my clover field from yesterday. I want to maintain it for next year. What should I do this spring to keep it pure and strong this next spring/summer/fall? Thanks guys!!!!

Take care of your soil. Everything else will follow.
 
Thank you all for your opinions. I like the idea of using herbicide sparingly. I'll keep an eye on it this spring. I do have another question. How do you all feel about overseeding it in, say March, with more clover and even WR? Or should I save the WR for this fall, or do both spring and fall nurse crop of WR? thanks!
 
Thank you all for your opinions. I like the idea of using herbicide sparingly. I'll keep an eye on it this spring. I do have another question. How do you all feel about overseeding it in, say March, with more clover and even WR? Or should I save the WR for this fall, or do both spring and fall nurse crop of WR? thanks!

You can frost seed clover if you have bare spots. Oats may be a better spring plant than WR. Very light disking as someone suggests would be better if you decide to use cereal.

Just to be clear, a nurse crop of WR is used to help establish perennial clover in a new planting. Drilling or lightly disking cereal or brassica into suppressed but well established perennial clover in the fall is a good technique, but not called a nurse crop.

Thanks,

Jack
 
Last edited:
Mow the top off as needed. Just the tips or a height of 8-10 inches I like for ladino. Let it seed out from time to time and don’t mow if it’s stressed. Like a heat wave. Using this method I can maintain a ladino plot indefinitely with no herbicides.
 
With common ladino clover, I get 5 years or so out of a field before I need to rotate into an N seeking crop. With Durana, I get 7 to 10 years.
We have Ladino, and like you said, 5 years is about it before a fresh start is needed. (grass overtaking the clover). I was looking into Fixation Balansa clover to give us more longevity - but a Pa. resident habitat manager / forester said Balansa is overrated. Have you tried Fixation Balansa clover?? Durana clover is more geared to southern states / warmer climates, isn't it??
 
Last edited:
We have Ladino, and like you said, 5 years is about it before a fresh start is needed. (grass overtaking the clover). I was looking into Fixation Balansa clover to give us more longevity - but a Pa. resident habitat manager / forester said Balansa is overrated. Have you tried Fixation Balansa clover?? Durana clover is more geared to southern states / warmer climates, isn't it??

I tried it and was not impressed. I don't think Durana is a southern thing. In fact, I think a lot is sourced from the northwest. I think we see it more in the south because of the drought resistance characteristic. I would give it a try in PA. One technique I've used when a clover field gets old is to suppress it with 1 qt/ac of gly just before the cool nights move in and favor it in the fall. The gly is enough to kill al the grasses and it top kills the clover. I then use my little kasco no-till drill to drill WR and/or GHR into the clover. The WR or GHR germinates and gets above the clover before it bounces back from the root system. They help use up some of the excess N that the clover has been fixing into the field. This can give me an extra couple years before I need to rotate, but eventually you have to rotate. I'll only do this once in the life of a clover field to prolong it. Timing is key. It works with ladino and durana equally well.

One more option if you are using ladino is to mix it with chicory when you plant it in the fall with your WR nurse crop. The chicory provides summer food when the ladino goes dormant. I stopped using it when I switched to Durana. First, ladino when dormant for me for a couple months in the summer. Durana only goes dormant for a couple weeks in very dry summers. In most years it doesn't really go dormant for me. This reduced the need for the chicory. Second, Durana is more aggressive for me. It is slow to establish, but once established, it out-competes the chicory in just a couple years. So, the cost/benefit ratio for adding chicory was not not good enough for me to keep using it with Durana.

Thanks,

jack
 
New clover plots are fall planted with a nurse crop of cereal rye. I always plant a mixture of several varieties of clovers. I always include Medium Red and then mix with equal amounts of 2-4 varieties of white clovers.
Thin spots are frost seeded the following late winter or early spring.
Cereal rye is terminated in summer either by mowing or spraying with Clethodim (16 oz plus 1 qt crop oil/acre)
Fertilizer - every year or two with 6-24-24 or equivalent.
I used to mow a couple of times per year but the myth of mowing to increase nutrient levels and palatability has been pretty well debunked by university studies. If you want to mow to make yourself feel better have at it but all you are really doing is reducing the amount of forage.
In August I drill cereal grains into the clover to give some added forage for fall and spring.
Year 2 and annually thereafter I spray in May with a reduced rate of Glyphosate (1/2 quart to 3/4 quart per acre). This terminates the fall planted rye and kills any unwanted weeds but will not harm the clovers. It may set the clovers back a little but they will bounce right back in no time at all. It is very difficult to kill clovers with Gly.
Clovers can be maintained indefinitely with this practice.
 
I like to let that cereal crop go all the way to maturity and near falling down. I think that excess carbon is very important to the overall health of the clover, and the excess carbon also helps discourage grasses from sprouting up from free nitrogen. All that free nitrogen gets tied up trying to break down that fresh straw crop laying on the ground. Also, don't underestimate the value of 5'+ of fibrous rye or wheat roots helping bore channels and pull up nutrients.

Timing the mowing is important too. Keep in mind, There's probably nobody closer to the center pole (globers call it the north pole) than me. But I shoot to mow 8 weeks before first frost, and that seems to wrap up any would-be grasses for the rest of the season, and leaves plenty of time for the clover to rebound to full tonnage before the chowdown begins.

**That also helps clover pull through a dry period. We set a record for lack of rain last season, and that rye really helped keep the sun off the ground and off the clover. The cereals are tremendous hosts for mycorhizal fungi, and once you've got that, you up your root mass per plant by a factor of 100.
 
Top