How to Grow Burr Medic (California Burclover)? Detailed Guide to Planting Methods and Key Technical Points
Burr medic is highly nutritious and is an excellent quality forage grass; it can also be used as green manure, and has both edible and medicinal value. So how do you grow burr medic? Let's take a look together.
1. Cultivation Time
It is mainly divided into spring cultivation and autumn cultivation, with autumn cultivation being more common. For autumn cultivation, sowing is done in batches from late July to late September, and harvesting for market begins successively from mid-August to late March of the following year. For spring cultivation, sowing is done successively from late February to early June, with harvesting from early April to late July.
2. Land Preparation and Sowing
Burr medic is usually plowed to a depth of about 15cm. Along with plowing, apply 1000kg of human and livestock manure per 667 sq m as base fertilizer, and form raised beds 20cm high and 1.5m wide to facilitate drainage. Then level the bed surface and sowing can begin. Burr medic is mostly broadcast sown. The sowing rate should be determined by season; generally, when sowing in early autumn and late spring, the temperature is higher and the soil is dry, so the seedling emergence rate is low and more seed should be sown. To avoid uneven emergence, seed selection should be carried out before sowing to reduce shriveled and bad seeds in the pods.
3. Fertilizer and Water
After sowing, water once each morning and evening every day to keep the soil sufficiently moist. Especially when sowing in early autumn and late spring, water must be kept up before emergence; seedlings emerge 4 to 5 days after sowing, and after emergence they should be watered once a day, and watering can be stopped after 6-7 days. When 2 true leaves appear, topdress, and afterward after each harvest, on the second day after harvesting apply 0.5% urea solution or dilute decomposed human urine; if fertilizer is applied immediately, it easily causes rot. After heavy rain and during spring when there is a lot of rain, pay attention to drainage to prevent waterlogging.
4. Pest and Disease Control
The main disease of burr medic is viral disease; the insect pests include aphids and cutworms. Viral disease mostly occurs from July to September. After burr medic is affected, the leaves become small and wrinkled, and growth is weak and poor. After September, the climate turns cooler and the disease disappears. Aphids cause damage in April-May and October-November, and can be controlled with 40% dimethoate 800-fold solution or 50% pirimicarb 2000-3000-fold solution. In fields where burr medic is grown, cutworms are most numerous, but they are not easy to detect, and usually no control is applied; the main thing is that spring solanaceous and other fruit vegetables cannot be arranged as the following crop, otherwise there will be many missing plants and root gaps, making replanting difficult.
5. Harvesting
When cutting burr medic for vegetables, the stubble should be short and neat; especially for the first harvest, the principle of low and even cutting must be followed so that later harvesting is easier and the yield increases. For early autumn sowing, harvesting begins after about 25 days, and it can be harvested 4 times; for late autumn sowing, it is harvested only 3 times; for early spring sowing, it is harvested 3 times; for late spring sowing, it is harvested from early July to late July, with 2 harvests.
Burr medic has relatively strong adaptability, suits most environments, and is not strict about soil requirements, making it a very easy plant to cultivate.