Mowing crimson and arrowleaf clover?

[BlakeJ]

My winter plot clovers are super high, I was thinking about mowing them back in about a month, then hitting them with cleth. But I can't find anything about mowing crimson and arrowleaf. Should I leave them alone?

[Antlers86]

Below is from an article I found regarding Crimson. I personally would wait to mow. With fawns dropping in the next month it will provide excellent cover. I learned the hard way mowing too early a couple years ago hitting 3 in 1 day.

Crimson Management

The only drawback to crimson clover for deer is that it is a relatively short season annual which produces well from November through April (excluding mid-winter) in the South and April through June in the North. However, the wildlife manager can take advantage of this short season in several ways, especially in the South. Crimson can be plowed under before planting a summer crop of grain sorghum, corn, pearl millet or any grass, which can then use the nitrogen fixed by the clover. Using minimum tillage, these same crops can be planted into crimson clover sod killed or partially killed by herbicides. The crimson left as mulch for a summer crop provides up to 70 lbs/acre nitrogen for use by grain sorghum or corn.
In the South, crimson can successfully reseed in September for several successive years by mowing in late August followed by light disking or even no disking, depending on soil conditions (usually heavy clay soil requires no disking, sandy requires disking). This works well (at least temporarily) when mixed with ryegrass, which will do the same thing.

[MadHatter]

Unless mowed or tilled, clover does very little in the form of nitrogen. Mow perennials, till annuals. Let it set seed, and there goes the majority of your nitrogen. It needs to be tilled while in bloom, or mowed often if soil improvement is your goal.
Clover biomass is a good mulch, but does very little in the way of nitrogen if the clover is killed at the wrong time.

[Mountaineer]

I mowed at the end of March before there were a lot of seed heads out and it really took off.

Mowed on 3/23


Same plot on 4/12







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[Dusty Britches]

Impressive, Mountaineer.

fyi, Antlers - I've already seen newborn fawns.