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planting rye and clover in spring???

Buck-Man

Buck-Man

Member
Here's the picture, I have 2 acres of a old clover field that is finally done , can I lightly till and spring plant In next 10 days with Rye and white clover with the ending result being just a clover field.
Would the rye work for shading weeds out during spring start up and then die off after they matured ?
 
The best time to plant clover is in the fall with a rye cover crop, with that being said if I was going to do a spring planting I would use oats as a cover crop not rye. You could just frost seed the clover and keep it mowed to control weeds if you wanted . You should check out Dlbtree Corner and read the Clover thread it will help a lot.
 
A fair amount of rye goes in to the ground in the spring. Get yourself an annual rye grass. You might have to keep it clipped, or the deer might do it for you. But it will die off at winter time. You could also go the way of spray and just spray it after the clover is established. Obviously using a grass herbicide such as select or fusilade. something along those lines.
 
you mean like a winter rye? That's what I wanted to plant now ,along with the white clover mix. Im not worried about the rye lasting for the deer. I just to help with weeds and protection for the clover to grow.
 
If it's an old clover field right now, I'd just broadcast clover into it right now. I wouldn't mess with anything else.
 
Cereal rye is very hardy and tougher to kill. Oats are cheaper and germinate/grow very easily, and is the go-to companion crop for establishing clover or alfalfa in the Spring. But, like Skip says, still prime time to frost seed clover -- that would be your easiest method. Then, later after soil temps warm up and things get growing, kill the competing grasses with Clethodim.
 
I personally have used annual rye as a cover crop in my own alfalfa fields. I actually wonder why more people do not do it. Unless you are combining the oats or needing the straw.

2 bu of oats to the acre is going to cost around $22/acre

6 pounds of rye Grass to the acre (wouldn't go anymore then that) is going to cost $9.90/acre.

Rye is cheaper and is a better feed source higher in protein then the oat forage. I am not going to blow my own horn but this is stuff I should know and do.

Oat prices where I work are currently 10.50 give or take a few cents.
annual rye is currently 1.65/pound. You can buy rye by the pound at seed stores etc...

Do what you want but the rye can be done and is quite effective as a cover crop.
 
jlarson007 said:
http://www.no-tillfarmer.com/pages/News---Annual-Ryegrass,-Cereal-Rye-Have-Important-Differences.php

Cereal Rye and rye "grass" are two different things. For spring cover cropping use the rye grass version. Very important. You will probably have to clip it once, maybe twice. It will die off in the winter.
Click to expand...

Thank you:confused:

Cereal rye is more like winter wheat, but probably was the biggest draw on my farm last season, with the very light snow cover we had in western Iowa all winter.
 
so to not confuse anyone I already did my frost seeding of different plots , but the 2 older clover plots that I want to redo I didn't want to frost seed because their was too much garbage on top of the soil . So I wanted to do a light till or either a aggressive drag harrow to clean it up . Then I wanted to plant the rye and clover mix now.
(I will make sure the ground is firm enough for the clover .)
 
Use clover and oats, not rye grass or cereal rye in the spring. Whatever does not look great in august, replant in clover and cereal/winter rye, or ideally the complete dbltree fall mix.
 
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