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Red Clover

Red Clover
Introduction
Mr. John Doe

Head Director

Description

Optimal Time/Temperature for Germination:
While red clover can grow during almost every season, it typically does the best when the weather is still warm out. Plan to start your red clover late summer or early autumn before the temperatures get cold for the best results. Hardiness zones are 3 to 8.
Optimal Soil Conditions:
Most varieties of clover do best in soil with a pH between 6.0 and 7.0, although some do well in soil with a pH as high as 8.5. Red clover isn’t super picky, so the location doesn’t matter too much. Before you plant, hand pull all the weeds and make sure the soil is well-draining. You can check on the soil by looking at it after rainfall—if there are standing puddles of water, choose a different location. If you’ve never planted something in the location before, tilling the soil is a good idea. Red clover will grow in most light conditions, so you don’t have to worry too much about sunlight. You need to inoculate red clover seeds 24 hours before you plant them in a container to mix peat moss inoculant with the Rhizobium bacteria in with your red clover. The bacteria will allow the seeds to use nitrogen from the air and actually grow instead of dying in the soil.
Seed Planting Depth, Spacing and Procedure:
Mix your red clover seeds with grass seed. Grass seeds help prevent weeds, so you’ll get more red clover if you mix them together. Pick orchardgrass, reed canary grass, perennial ryegrass, smooth bromegrass, or tall fescue, then mix it with your red clover seeds at a 1:1 ratio. Sprinkle 10 to 12 lb (4.5 to 5.4 kg) of seeds per acre. If you spread too few seeds, your red clover won’t grow. Weigh out your seeds and compare it with your space to make sure you have enough before you start planting. You can water the area after you’ve spread the seeds.
Best Companion Plants and Plants that Hinder:
Red clover is an unbeatable companion plant itself. It fixes atmospheric nitrogen in root nodules and acts as a living mulch. Single forage grasses to mix with are Orchardgrass, Perennial ryegrass, Reed canarygrass, Smooth bromegrass, Tall fescue, and Timothy. It is very well suited for use as the forage legume in short rotations with corn and even oats. Consequently, where erosion is not a problem, clover planted for seed should be sown without a companion grass or the grass should be sown at a low rate.

Growing Instructions

Crop Maintenance

Moisture Requirements & Solutions:
Red clover doesn’t need a ton of maintenance, and usually, you can let nature take care of it for you. If your climate is going through a dry spell, you can water the clover about once a week to help it grow. Make sure rain has been somewhat regular before harvesting.
Weeding Needs & Solutions:
Before you plant clover, you will need to get rid of any unwanted plant growth. Clover seeds will do best if they don’t have to compete with weeds while they’re getting established. To remove all vegetation, rocks, and debris from the area, till or rake the soil to a depth of about eight inches (20 cm). Tilling a month in advance will give any weeds time to regrow so you can remove them before planting. Tilling now will also make it easier to change the soil if the pH needs to be adjusted.
Feeding Needs/Optimal Natural Fertilizers:
Clover can produce nitrogen all on its own, as long as it forms the proper relationship with the soil (which you encourage by adding a clover inoculant when planting). Adding in fertilizer will usually encourage grasses and weeds to grow instead of the clover.
Pests, Diseases & Solutions:
root rots and the foliar disease northern anthracnose are the most serious diseases of red clover. Root rots are the worst of the two, resulting in plant death and stand thinning. Maintaining plant vigor by maintaining adequate soil fertility and proper cutting management are the most practical means of minimizing losses to root rots. Northern anthracnose causes severe foliage loss during the first growth of the season. With reduced percentage of leaf material, forage quality and yield decline seriously. Varieties resistant to northern anthracnose are available and provide the only practical control action. Other diseases of red clover include powdery mildew, viruses, sclerotinia crown and stem rot (aka ‘white mold’) and other fungal diseases. Selection of disease-resistant varieties is the primary control option in red clover. Soil fertility and proper harvest management (for example: cutting early if disease problems become severe) are also important in limiting red clover diseases. If clover mites are or have previously been a problem for you, select plants that they dislike and stay away from: annuals such as marigolds, petunias, and zinnias; perennials such as salvia and roses; and shrubs and trees such as barberry, juniper, spruce, arborvitae, and yew.
Keeping the clover at the same height is important for next year’s bloom season. After your last harvest of the growing season (usually in late summer), use a lawn mower to mow the clover down short and get it ready for autumn. It will come back for 2 to 3 years after you plant it. While clover can come back every year, its natural predators usually prevent that from happening. Disease and pests will most likely kill your crop after a couple years, so be prepared to till and reseed the area.
When to Harvest/Number of days to maturity:
Harvest it 2 to 3 times per season. Do your first harvest 60 to 70 days after planting. After that, wait 30 to 35 days in between each subsequent harvest. (If you don’t want to harvest your red clover, release cows or goats into the field and allow them to graze instead of harvesting.) Harvesting when environmental conditions are poor could harm red clover plants and negatively impact production. As a result, don’t harvest during drought and don’t harvest if it is unseasonably warm.
How to Harvest:
Conduct your first cutting before the plant’s first mid-bloom. Mid-bloom (typically be in the spring) is when half of the red clover plants in a given location (a field, your garden, or yard) have at least one flower. Harvesting at this point should yield sweet red clover flowers and leaves. This should not hurt yields for later harvest. The best time to cut red clover is early in the morning, right after the dew has dried. This way, it’ll still be somewhat cool out and the plant will have some time to recover before the hottest point of the day. If you cut late in the day, you might weaken and hurt the plant. Take a look at an individual clover, then find the leaf growth just beneath it. Hold your pruners at an angle and clip the stem above the leaf growth. After cutting the stem from the plant, you’ll want to remove any remaining stem from the flower itself. Leaves may be cut from the stem in clumps of three. When cutting the leaves (or the flower), avoid cutting the entire plant at its base. While the plant can regrow more leaves and stems, you’ll hurt its ability to produce if you cut it too low. Remember, don’t waste any part of the plant you won’t use. Only cut the leaves you plan on using. Collect the flowers and dry them out in the sun before using them. Cut at the second mid-bloom. Depending on your region, you’ll likely be able to get another harvest in about six weeks (typically in the summer). To do this, wait until the plant blooms fully and then gets to another mid-bloom. Full bloom is when the vast majority of plants in a given location (a field, your garden, or your yard) have flowers that are blooming. Cutting at or after full bloom could harm the plant and potentially lower yield for the following season. As a result, if you plan to continually harvest a particular red clover patch, you should not harvest late into a bloom.
Optimal Storage temperature and conditions:
Place your harvest on trays or racks to dry. Unless you choose to eat the leaves or flowers when they are fresh, you need to dry out your harvest so you can store it properly. To do this, place wire racks or trays with leaves and flowers in a shaded area. Then, allow them to turn crisp. Make sure wherever you lay your harvest is not too moist or humid. Your harvest could mold or mildew. If you want to speed up the drying process, consider placing your harvest in a food dehydrator. After you’ve dried your clover leaves or flowers, you need to store them appropriately. Gently place them into some sort of airtight container. When you’re done, close the container as tight as you can. Use mason jars, Tupperware, or other similar containers. Place them in a part of your house that is cool and dry. This is important, as the cooler and dryer the location, the higher the chances that you’ll be able to store your clover for a substantial period of time. Store your red clover in a place with temperatures lower than 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius) and 60% humidity. Red clover is edible, and you can use them as a garnish or in a summer soup. Use red clover as the base of food dishes or substitute it for other ingredients. The seed makes a favored seed sprouting food too.
Optimal Preserving Procedures:
Seed Saving:
It will spread by seed, if you let it go to seed. The individual plants don’t live more than 2-3 years. In the year you want to produce seed, the first crop should be harvested for hay because it will have too much vegetative growth for good seed yield and spring conditions are usually too wet for producing good quality seed. Seed production in red clover is highly dependent on insect pollination, which occurs primarily through bumblebees. It might pay to set a couple hives of bumblebees near the field during flowering. It is critical that seed be dry enough to prevent heating. (Heating will dramatically reduce the germination of the seed.) Be sure to store seeds in a cool, dark place.

Harvest and Storage

Notes

Avoid plants with discolored flowers or leaves. Plants with discolored flowers or leaves could be sickly. Harvesting sick or weak plants could not only hurt the plant (and make it so the plant can’t recover from the harvest), but it could impact the flavor and quality of whatever you produce with it. Allow plants with discolored flowers or leaves to grow until the next season. If they still appear discolored, uproot them. Different seeds than above but fyi, the most popular types of clovers for lawns are Dutch White (a perennial that grows to 8 inches, or 20 centimeters) and Microclover (a durable clover that has small leaves and short stems). To encourage fuller patches of clover already growing in your yard, mow your lawn to 1.5 to 2 inches (3.8-5 cm). This height is more favorable to clover than to grasses. Inoculate them yourself. Inoculation is the process of coating the seeds with a nitrogen- fixing bacterium that allows the clover to produce its own nitrogen. Though generally recognized as safe, red clover has minor estrogenic properties and should be avoided by those who are pregnant or breastfeeding. Red clover sprouts’ nutritional value is said to be comparable to that of alfalfa sprouts. Avoid eating unsprouted seeds. The seeds contain a compound which can interfere with your body’s ability to digest protein. This compound will only be destroyed after the seeds have sprouted.

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