Planting Red Clover in the Pasture

Clover seed is small. Red Clover seed is not as small as the seeds of Ladino or White Clover, but it is pretty easy to spin out your entire purchase before you have covered your entire pasture.

One solution is to dilute it. I used cracked corn to bulk it up. The corn is also bright enough that it provides a marker of where I have been.

I also threw in some ground limestone because the clover seed wants to percolate down through the cracked corn and not stay mixed. Clover adores limestone.

This is half of what I planted today. It is low and dominated by Tall Fescue. Tall fescue is tall enough to choke out white clover. My hope is that the red clover will be tall enough to slug it out with the tall fescue.

Plastic grocery bags were tied to the fence every five paces.

I split my mixed seeds between two, five gallon buckets. Then I dropped a pop bottle every five paces on the end opposite the grocery bags. That created lanes I would walk down that were about fifteen feet wide, the width that the seed spinner spread seeds.

I figure I averaged four seeds every square foot. The leverage is to manage the red clover that survives so it self-seeds and sustains a population within the sward.

The Captain reminded me that tall fescue is more sensitive to glyphosate (Round Up) than white clover. I want to play around with spraying the tall fescue with a mild dose of glyphosate when the seed-heads start to extend. That is usually early June. Plants are most sensitive to herbicides when they are making that big, reproductive push.

Birds singing

Apologies for the shakiness. I was taking video to get the singing.