The Jury is Back

A while back I had a post about frost seeding clover into some of our pastures. Today while I was moving the cows to a fresh paddock I began looking for signs that some of the seed found a home. Just about every bare spot between clumps of grass was inhabited by young clover plants. This clover will increase the protein content of the pastures as well as fixing a good amount of nitrogen in the soil, which will benefit the growth of the rest of the plants in the pasture. We are not able to get quite enough nitrogen into out fields otherwise. This becomes obvious when I see how much greener and more quickly the grass grows after the chicken pens pass over a section of the field. It ends up looking like a green racing stripe.