posted 1 hour ago
I couldn't find info about this topic so i decided to make my own. At first i hated this clover, because it was so explosive i tried to eradicate it from the garden, but as Permies are probably familiar with, slowly i learned to love it. So much so by now that i'm actively saving the seeds and planning to use it in experimenting with on a newly piece of soil i try to take into production. The farmer i farm with is slowly retiring and as things stand with constantly broken tractors the supply with manure is all but sure. Anyway cow manure is a temporary fix and cannot be scaled up as i want it to be, so i'm slowly moving into cover cropping. As this plant is local and normally perfectly adapted to my context i see it as a mojaor candidate. i have experimented with white clover, but find it rather dominating at times, suffocating my crops. Red clover is better behaved. But what i really like about Speckled Medock or Medicago Arabica is that it is so explosive in spring that i covers almost a square meter or 11 square foot. It just quietly grows over the winter. I suspect it represses grasses somewhat but not the taller plants that i have growing all over my chaos beds like parsnips and goats beard. It just seems to creep around them to not waste time killing them, but reach as far as it possibly can deposing seeds richly as it does. It's so explosive i'm sure it must have a superb root system full of nitrogen fixing bacteria. And then it's quite easy to remove. It grows from a center that i can break off to pull all the spreaded branches away in one go. Leaving the roots in the soil. I'm watching it now for growing back, but literature about it is saying it's an annual to be seeded in autumn.
Besides that i find it incredulous that there's not a ton more research done by the universities that are supposed to work for us making this world a better place, not much research has been done into this amazing plant. So i'm happy to hear if any fellow Permies have some experience with this plant even if they haven't tried to grow it out.
My thinking is that i'm going to dry the seeds this year, as i have started to be seen in the pictures below. I'm planning on deliberately spreading them on a new plot i am growing. As it is already devided into strips i'll grow different mixes. One pure, the next more other plants, the next even more. The more differing species a soil contains the more biodiversity one can expect to find in the soils. If people seem keen i can dig up a documentary about this and post it here.
Creating edible biodiversity and embracing everlasting abundance.