# Ball Clover



## mtarrant (Aug 10, 2009)

Anyone have experience with ball clover?
This is for pasture not hayfield. Understand it builds a lot of nitrogen, and organic matter in sandy soil.


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## vhaby (Dec 30, 2009)

I've seen an excellent stand of ball clover on a friend's place in the Kilgore/Longview vicinity. The recommended seeding rate is 3 lb/acre. Because of the extremely small seed size, it may be difficult to set a drill to plant that small amount. I've tried seeding ball clover two falls in succession. I have a sporatic stand. The first year, with a new used JD 800 drill, I over planted seed initially and ran out of seed for the rest of the pasture. The second fall, I calibrated the drill more precicely by totally closing down the openings of the small seed box and then taking a small sledge hammer and tapping the shaft to ensure that it was tightly closed. At that point, I locked down the shaft in a totally closed setting and still planted 1.5 lb of ball clover seed per acre. At this time and in a drought situation, the ball clover is putting on seed heads in the lightly stocked pasture. Don't know if it will actually set seed as we missed another rain tonight.

As for its nitrogen fixation, it may fix from 50 to 100 lb of N/acre. With cattle grazing in an excellent stand much of the fixed nitrogen will be delivered to the soil by way of cattle urine and manure defication.


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## mtarrant (Aug 10, 2009)

Thanks vhaby, I am in Athens, so I think we have similar soils. my vet Dr Richardson has a full stand on his place, says it takes several years and don't even try unless PH is 6 or higher. 
We need rain bad down hear too!!!!!!


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