Sweet clover

[fixerupper]

Is sweet clover an annual or perennial? The stuff has been showing up in ditches and grassy areas here in Northwest Iowa and I'm in full battle with it this summer. I haven't seen sweet clover in any amounts for all of fifty years so I don't have much experience with the stuff but it is making a grand showing now for some reason. I have a couple of brome grass waterways I bale and the one had some tall sweet clover in it. I mowed it down with the hay but when I raked it the stuff tangled in the rake and just generally made a mess. I ended up leaving most of it lay and coming back with a pitch fork and pitching it aside to be burned. This spring I remember seeing what looked like a few scattered alfalfa plants coming up in the waterways and I didn't pay much attention to it, not knowing it actually was sweet clover. The hay has been off for three weeks and I've been monitoring the sweet clover that was cut off and it is not coming back, but instead, new fresh plants are coming up elsewhere. This leads me to believe it spreads by seed? I sprayed the waterways with 2-4D a week ago and the new sweet clover growth is dying, but it looks like I'm going to have to have the 2-4D ready in the spring when it starts coming up so I can nail it early.

 

[Lazy WP]

Its neither. It is bi-annual! Same as most thistles.

 

[Richard G.]

The sweet clover we have here will not make a mess in the rake. Now vetch will get real viney.
Richard in NW SC

 

[fixerupper]

If it's biannual then I should spray the new growth late this summer so it won't come up in the spring?

 

[old]

I have tried many times to get some of it growing here and do not seem to be able to get it to for some reason. Deer love the stuff so I like it for food plot areas

 

[teddy52food]

Bees love it. Makes good honey. White is better than yellow.

 

[Dick2]

We used to raise a lot of it back when somerfallow was a common practice. We usually waited until it was 6-7ft' tall and then plowed it under for a green manure crop.

Dad would often want some for seed. In that case, we raised the JD swather as high as it would go and clipped the top portion when it was about 3 ft. tall. The re-growth only got about 3-4 ft. tall, which made it easier to combine for the seed later on.

We planted the sweet clover seed with the grass seeder attachment on the grain drill, with oats as the main crop. The grass seeder just broadcast the seed on top of the ground. After the oats were planted, we went over the ground with a drag harrow. When we harvest the oats, the sweet clover would look kind of thin and be 8-12 inches high - but the next spring it grew like crazy.

 

[Traditional Farmer]

Not Sweet Clover its one of the few things deer won't hardly eat,its bitter and they'll nibble a little but won't eat much.To make it work right I plant it early Spring with
some Oats as cover for it then just let it go the first year it doesn't do much but the 2nd year it'll bloom like crazy for a couple months.I plant it for my wife's Honey Bees
its about done now.

 

[bigboreG]

Spray it just before it goes dormant. It
will pull the herbacide into the roots for
a complete kill. That's about the only good
way to do it Jim. It bad here too in Sac
and Carroll counties.

 

[fixerupper]

Well I have the sprayer loaded and cocked and I'm ready for battle this fall. At the end of my lane the county replaced the bridge with a culvert two years ago. When they were done, about 200 feet of creek bank was torn up on both sides. I fall seeded brome grass on the torn up part that year and next spring the brome came up pretty good. This spring that area was taken over by sweet clover. It smells so darned good and attracted a few bees but I had to mow it the other day to save the grass seeding. It is taking over in a few other places where they cleaned the crick and I just finished mowing that too. I can see it would be very good for bees but all of the bee keepers in this neighborhood are gone.

 

[black]

(reply to post at 17:28:51 07/23/15)

We plant white at the camp because it catches well and grows easier that grass especialy in the shaded areas . But most fields have purple clover with lots of bees . Cost /bale is high but we don't have a close market for it .

Larry --ont.

 

[fixerupper]

According to the old timers around here sweet clover needs to be cut and baled real early before it gets tall and stemmy if it is used for hay. It does look a lot like alfalfa when it is small and 12" tall and it seems to grow like crazy, much faster than alfalfa. I can see how it can get away from a person real fast. Dad said years ago if sweet clover got in alfalfa the sweet clover only lasted one year. I remember sweet clover being real bad on one of our hay fields when I was a little kid but that's been over a half century ago. I felt like taking a cell phone video when I was bush hogging it yesterday. It was as tall as the hood on the 630. It doesn't seem to bother the bush hog much even though it was real tall and thick. It chopped up real well. I was in fourth gear, about 4.5 MPH and the tractor was talking real loud but it could pull it OK.