Hay cutting

[magnet-man]

I planted hairy vetch and yellow sweet clover on ten acres in the beginning of September. The vetch had come up but never did see the clover. Well yesterday I went out to check the bees and the field had been cut for hay! Well I guess I wonÂ’t have vetch for next spring. Maybe if I am lucky the clover will come up.

The landowner is an absentee owner who lets some friends cut hay on it. I should have posted that ten acres not to be cut for hay until after the vetch seedpods were dry. I wonder if the clover will come up now.

Needless to say I am bummed to the tune of $300.

[ October 21, 2006, 10:00 AM: Message edited by: magnet-man ]

[BerkeyDavid]

mag man
you may be pleasantly surprised. THe hay cutting may have been the best thing for the sweet clover. As you know it is a biannual, so if it sprouted this fall it could really boom next spring.
Never tried to grow vetch.

[tecumseh]

it is my experience magnet man that just about all lugumes are extremely slow to germinate. given that you have scarafied and innoculated the seeds, time is the critical component. most of the time (qualified in that some rotary hay cutter can be set to scalp the ground and remove a bit too much above ground growth) removing any excess forage will promote the cool early season forages such as vetch and clover.

[sierrabees]

I have about an acre of clover that is in it's 4th year. Every year after it is about 80% gone to seed I turn out about 20 goats on it and let them take it down to two or three inches. Each day after they have fed for a couple of hours I let them out and herd them around different places on my ranch so they can plant the seeds that haven't digested(already innoculated and packaged in little balls of fertilizer. Almost any place on my ranch that has enough sun and water is starting to get taken over by clover. The irrigated pasture that I originally planted and the goats mow for me keeps getting better every year. Unless the landowner decides to lease the land out for cattle or horse pasture you should get a decent clover bloom next year.

I set up a small out yard this spring in an area that had thousands of acres of good clover and other forage. In June they trucked in several thousand cattle and I ended up feeding my bees syrup just to get them through. All that beautiful pasture land for five miles in any direction looks like desert today. Never realized that some cow-calf operations are just as migratory as some beekeepers.

[magnet-man]

I had thought about broadcasting some more seeds, but I have an angiography/angioplasty this Friday. I don't think my doctor would like me going out to the bees Sunday. ;)

[ October 22, 2006, 09:12 AM: Message edited by: magnet-man ]

[BerkeyDavid]

Good luck Friday!

[sierrabees]

I like to broadcast clover near the end of winter when I can count on a long stretch of spring rain and a little sun to help it germinate. If you wait, until next year you will be able to take advantage of the biannual nature of clover to get a more consistant crop from year to year. This will eventually happen anyway but an overseeding on year 2 will speed that process up.

Good luck on your angio. I've had four stents put in spread over two incidents and the first couple of years it slowed me down a lot. They do such a good job now days that, with better living through chemistry I can lead a pretty normal life twelve years after the first one.

[buz]

Sierrabees: I'm surounded by a cattle ranch w/thousands of acres. They keep moving the cows to find enough forage--fall activities include seperating those ready for market from the others. The money seems to be in finishing beef.
Anyone can do that on an odd acre--just have to truck in the feed. Ooops that'l raise the cost of production.
Peace

[magnet-man]

I just don't want another bypass.

[sierrabees]

There's a big market here in California for "Range Fed" beef. Most of the range land is now held by speculators who are absentee, all the old families that know how to manage rangeland are selling out. The corporate cattlemen lease the land and could care less about the long term effect so they leave the cattle in place as long as they can find a blade of grass. After a few years they just lease a different location because nothing usefull is still growing. Then the speculators can convince the county that the land is not good enough for Ag and get a varience to put in a housing development. I doubt that this will stop until the state is completely covered with parking lots. I'm not an enviro, but I sure wish we could find a ballance between no growth and total destruction. Something similar happened where I lived on the coast which is why I moved out and don't want to even go back and look at the "progress" that has taken place in what was some of the nicest farm country around thirty years ago.