Sweet clover may be used for hay or pasture or as a plow-down crop. By far, its greatest use and adaptation is as a pasture- and soil-improving crop.
The amount of grazing it will furnish in its seeding year depends upon its companion crop. If seeded with a small grain that is harvested for grain, little forage production can be expected. If the grain is pastured or otherwise seeded with less competition, some first year pasturage can be expected. In general, it can be pastured once it reaches a height of 12 to 14 inches if close grazing is avoided. It should not be grazed during September and early October when it is producing winter root reserves.
Sweet clover is not as palatable as most other legumes because of its high coumarin content. Livestock soon get used to its taste and consume it readily. The coumarin content presents no animal health problems when used as pasture.
There is less danger from bloat with sweet clover than with alfalfa, red clover or alsike, but some possibility does exist.
No other legume will provide as much grazing as sweet clover during the spring and summer of its second year. Animal performance is equal to that of alfalfa, and for a short period its carrying capacity is greater. The biggest problem during this period is to regulate animals so the clover is not grazed closely enough to harm new shoots yet is grazed closely enough to prevent it from flowering.
As a soil-improving crop, sweet clover probably has no equal. It has a deep taproot system that penetrates the subsoil, produces a large amount of growth that can be quickly broken down and converted to organic matter and fixes high levels of nitrogen on heavy clay soils.
Sweet clover is unexcelled as a legume used to improve nitrogen levels, especially at the end of the first growing season. In Iowa tests it produced 146 pounds of N as compared to 55 from alfalfa, 50 from red clover and 36 from ladino in the fall of the seeding year. Spring-seeded sweet clover may be plowed down during the fall or winter of the seeding year without much decrease in the potential nitrogen level produced during its full lifetime.
Sweet clover is a fine source of nectar and pollen for honey bees. Usually both yellow and white are used by beekeepers because yellow may bloom as much as two weeks before white, and a combination of the two extends the flowering season.
Planting rates vary. 7-15 lbs per acre depending on whether you use it in a mix with other crops or your soil is good or poor.
