THE OWNER BUILT HOME & HOMESTEAD
(Page 4 of 13)
September/October 1972
By Ken Kern
A well-balanced pasture community is analogous to well-made concrete: various plants combine to form a dense ground cover in the same way that sand and cement fill porous spaces around coarse aggregates. An example is the way broomgrass fills in around alfalfa, and ladino clover fills in around orchardgrass.
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Since the time of George Washington ("Orchardgrass of all others is in my opinion the best mixture with clover") farmers knew that grass and legumes should be grown together. If grass is grown without a legume companion, nitrogen soil deficiency is likely and the crop will contain excessive energy-giving carbohydrates at the expense of mineral and protein content. If a legume pasture is seeded without a grass companion, more nitrogen becomes available than required; volunteer grasses and weeds will soon invade the legume. So in general it is prudent to sow half grass and half legume in a sod crop mixture. As mentioned in the previous chapter, legumes alone are able to obtain nitrogen from the atmosphere. Nitrogen is "fixed" by symbiotic bacteria which live in nodules on their roots. This is the reason why legumes are less sensitive than grasses to the level of nitrogen in the soil.
It has been found that the presence of a legume in a sod culture increases the protein content of the companion grass. Corn, for instance, that is gown with soybeans has twice the nitrogen content. The protein content of timothy hay can be increased by growing it with alfalfa. Grass also grows at a faster rate when a companion crop of legume is present. The yield of a grass crop can be doubled when red clover is included in the sod mixture.
Seed mixtures and proportions must be determined with great care. A choice is influenced more by soil and climate than any other factor. Temperature, soil moisture, latitude, altitude, soil pH and rainfall are main considerations. Alfalfa does poorly on wet undrained soils where alsike clover thrives. Studies at the Wisconsin Experiment Station show that an acre of bromegrass/alfalfa mixture provides as much pasturage as 2 1/2 acres of bluegrass. With an oat/soybean mixture, only the oats germinate and grow; an oat/field pea mixture, however, gives a balanced crop. Bromegrass matures early and crowds out red clover; timothy matures too late to make a satisfactory stand with alfalfa. But bromegrass/alfalfa and timothy/red clover are excellent mixtures.
The best companion crop is the one that gives the least competition . . . grass and legume mixtures should produce together for best results. One naturally wishes to extend the grazing season to as much of a year-round program as possible. To do this it may be necessary to have two or more separate pasturesone for cool season sod crops, and one for warm season sod crops. Warm season crops begin growth in late spring, with most growth during the summer. Cool season crops are seeded in the winter and start growth early the following spring. A dormant period occurs here in midsummer, but growth resumes in early fall.
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