I am a seed blend guy and like to look for blends that have a good amount of clover in them. My question is.... Do you have to inoculate the clover in these blends? Or do they come pre-inoculated? A lot of the blends come treated with DeltAg Seed Coat which is not an inoculant to my understanding. You don't ever hear of these companies making blends talking about inoculating the clover in them.

Thanks

I think the blends in a pre made up bag w everything already mixed come ready to go/plant

I prefer blends without clover and top dressing with clovers after other seeds are covered

I know the bags of crimson clover I buy have the inoculant coated on them. The problem is the inoculant weighs as much as the seed, so a 50lb bag is really only 25lbs of seed

This doesn't answer your question, but it what I do. I plant the larger seeds, then top sow the clover before a rain.

Then look at germination rate to get pounds of pure live seed.

Another example gmterry - if I buy a bag of deer magnet with like 8 diff seeds in it - they are not going to make u pick out the small amount of clover to inoculate - it is ready to go out of the bag

But I like doing what some of the others said - plant and cover big seeds and then just throw the clover over what u planted before a rain - u can ask your co-op if the clover needs inoculating and if u by a pre mixed blend which lot of people do and I do some - u should b good to go

its my understanding that if clover has been grown in the area before then the bacteria is already in the soil and the inoculate isn't needed. Can anybody confirm that?

Maybe. Depending on tillage, etc. If someone is planting spring plots and discing 2-3 times before planting then doing the same before planting fall plots, the biology probably isn’t there at initial planting to fix a lot of N. It’s not necessary to inoculate to get the clover to grow, but the bacteria are necessary to fix the N

Thanks Tdog. Yes I use to plant large seed first, cultipack, then spread clover, and cultipack again. It wore me out with the large fields. I have had good success with spreading seed blends on a firm seed bed and cultipacking before a rain. My clover is always done well without any inoculating.

Blends allow me to do less passes which helps I think. Pros and cons to both.

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I ready for planting time to get here - Lov it when they start growing then deer start hitting them

I would not assume clover comes innoculated in a seed blend. I know the kind I get it is not.

But I do agree that most of what I have read is that once you get the innoculent bacteria in the soil, there isn't a need to keep adding it. I have planted straight plot spike clover from TS, and it isn't innoculated. It came up well. I think the innoculent helps more with nitrogen fixation.

I also plant clover on top of the ground ahead of a rain.

You could always buy a cereal seed blend, and then get a clover seed blend and add it, or seed it after you do the cereals. That is generally what I do when I disk.

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If u look at it - plot spike tells u their seed does not need innoculant - it grows as is or it is ready to go!! that’s why it’s not there

Nobody is going to put a seed blend out - say a 50 pound bag and tell u to pick out the 5 pounds that are clover and u need to innoculate that - u would b crazy to buy it like that - they want the blend to work

We buy blends without clover as we are not huge fans of crimson clover and have plenty in the seed bank anyway. But for years we are not time crunched we cultipack the big seed in then sow the small seeds and cultipack again. In time crunch years they get seeded all at the same time and drug.