NOPS Newsletter September 2024

Balansa Clover – What is it?   

 A top flowering annual clover

• Why are we interested? 
• Strong early spring growth
• Add legume to first grazings of new pasture
• Handles wet soils.
  §    Small seed – low sowing rate

Balansa can be very productive at this time of year, early spring, that this production comes, is awesome for many of our pasture systems.  

Re-seeding legumes are becoming a key feature of dryland pastures, and for irrigated pastures not many plants enable us to kick off spring in such a hurry.  By adding an early spring legume into a pasture system there are some pretty impressive implications around spring nitrogen requirements which are looking very exciting.

Anything to overcome?

• It is a true annual, only persisting past the first season if it can set seed.
• In aggressive grazing systems,  Balansa may not self-seed, so we need to find reliable methods to reintroduce Balansa.
• In systems where Balansa does self-seed there is potential for very high clover % in pastures recovering from summer/autumn drought conditions Potential animal health/bloat issues. 

 Realistically very few situations are improved just by adding seed to a fertiliser bin; we are working hard to partner with farmers to develop methods to best establish Balansa clover into pastures. 
A big part of this is taking performance measurements to enable a clear view of the value added to your pasture by inclusion of Balansa clover, the numbers look better and better but we need to stay aware of any drawbacks.
Key learnings so far are just how productive Balansa clover can be when added to general pasture mixes, and the wide variety of potential uses. Everything from oversowing to improve spring pasture legume composition to being sown as a specialist hay crop as a seed development tool in dryland pastures.