I typically use this technique when a clover field is getting older and is getting pretty grassy. I use a variety of N seeking crops. I can mow it with the mower set so low it is almost scalping. I typically drill into the clover. This helps use up some of the N, but does not deal with the grass infiltration. The other technique I use with an older clover field if I don't have time to rotate into a full N seeking crop, is to suppress the clover with 1 qt/ac glyphosate. This is enough to kill the grasses, It will top kill the clover. It allows the crops I drill to germinate and get above the clover and then the clover bounces back and fills in. You are absolutely correct that timing with rain in the forecast is important. The gly stresses the clover and you don't was a dry spell to become a second stresser.
I'm sure I've posted these pics before, but it shows an example of this technique. I was playing around comparing approaches. In the picks below, half the field was mowed flat before drilling and the other have was suppressed with gly. In this case I used some WR and daikon radish.
That fall both sides looked the same. But the following spring one side was grassy and the other nice clover.
Yoder, I love your pictures, I don't remember seeing those before. Growing stuff and seeing the results of good planning is fun!.
Was the side that you sprayed the 1 quart of gly the one with no grass in the spring?
I sometimes use this 1 quart per acre of gly mix as one more tool in the toolbox for clover management, but two years ago in the midst of a drought, where a promised rain didn't materialize, I totally killed on of my best clover fields doing this, which taught me a fresh lesson on using gly on clover too freely.
So, I want to point out to people looking for herbicide options for clover management other than gly and Imazethapyr (both of which have their place), a tank mix of 10-16 oz of clethodim, 1-3 guarts per acre of 2,4-DB (Butyrac 200), 16 ounces of crop oil per acre, and 48 oz of AMS per acre will kill most grasses and broadleafs with no residual carryover and no damage to the clover. But herbicide is not the number one answer to nice clover. Read on.
Lowering N is very key to clover management, and nowhere is this fact illustrated better than planting corn in a worn-out clover field, then following up with clover again the following year. This usually results in clover on steroids, the nicest clover crop imaginable.
Grasses are the #1 main enemy of clover, but once the soil nitrogen levels are sky high from continuous mono-culture clover, just killing the grasses with herbicide no longer works. After killing the grass the clover will still look small and stunted and within a short time the grass will bounce right back.
This is where the allelopathic grass killing power and nitrogen reducing properties of fall rye does its magic, but the full benefits are only realized if the rye is allowed to mature to it's final stage the next spring.
And I really do like your addition of a heavy layer of radishes to the rye mix, that's a big boost to the clover rejuvenation.
