Lidino always peters out late summer when red seems to love the 90 degree weather! That's why most always recommend both in a clover plot. Chicory is another one that seems to love the heat. Don't worry It will look good again in a few months.How about the yellowing of ladino? What are the thoughts here? The red still looks nice and green. Picture from today
I would agree with Jordan's assessment to some extent. Have you had ample rain in recent weeks? High temps? The white varieties(Ladino) have shallower root systems than red clover, your red will be drawing moisture from deeper in the soil profile, thus it will stay green longer, while the whites could be starting to lean more towards their summer dormancy stage at this point.
Next time you are out there, take a spade along. Pick a few random spots in the plot, highest point, lowest area, whatever and use the spade to open a slice in the ground to see how far down the moisture is in the soil profile. It took a lot of rain to keep the top 2" or 3" wet on our sand once the sun was high and temps reached the 80's everyday. If you notice a dry zone in the upper few inches of soil, the shallow rooted white clover may be sensing it as well and starting to prepare for dormancy. Along with the chicory, birdsfoot trefoil is a good companion to white clover and is much more tolerant of drier conditions due to a deep taproot and good lateral root branching, thus it will stay green when the clover goes dormant, much like the chicory.;)
Crud, I didn't see this before!
That will give you a good idea of how much moisture the top 4"-8" of soil is holding. Make sure you note the amount of rain you've had in the days leading up to your "test". As I said before, on our sand, once the soil was at it's "summertime" temperatures, we could get a solid 1" of rain and within 2 to 3 days of sunny 80+ temps, the top 4" was already dry. If those days were windy, it would expedite the drying and suck the moisture out even quicker. If you notice the same results, white clover varieties will likely struggle a bit more than deeper rooted red clover varieties. This is also where chicory and birdsfoot trefoil fall into the equation as well. If your ph is up near 6.5+, a little alfalfa would also be good to put into the mix on that soil if you can obtain some cheap seed. If you can, take a pic of the soil profile along the spade cut edge when you do this and post it.
My main reason for trimming it was that I had a bunch of weeds coming on strong and I wanted to get them before they set seed. It was a new planting as of last fall so it was its first time being cut. I don't plan on doing this again!
Yeah, might not be a real accurate "test" having just rained, 4 to 7 days without any additional rain will be a good tell though if you could get back out there then.
