Different types of harvest
Alfalfa is grown in the home garden for a variety of reasons. They can serve as an enrichment for our dishes, are an ideal feed for animals and of course their nitrogen content makes them interesting as green manure. Depending on the use, you can harvest alfalfa as follows:
- regularly cut off green parts of the plant
- Harvest seeds
- Work plants into the soil
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Harvest as fodder or hay
After this Cultivation Lucerne can be mowed up to four times a year. Whenever they reach a height of approx. Have reached 80 cm. The green is then dried as hay or immediately fed to animals.
At an early one sowing in March you can have the first green in May to harvest. If the alfalfa is to grow perennially, it must bloom at least once a year.
Harvesting as a cooking ingredient
If you want to enrich your salad or other dishes with alfalfa leaves, you can harvest young leaves as required. They are more tender and milder than older specimens. Flowers are suitable for making tea.
Harvesting the seeds
When the seed pods have turned dry and brown, the seeds can be harvested. You can as Seeds for the following year. They can also be used to make healthy alfalfa sprouts.
However, harvesting large quantities by hand is tedious work. It is easier if the plants are cut first and then the seeds are trimmed.
Utilization as green manure
Alfalfa in its function as Green manure are not harvested in the sense that they do not leave the bed at all. During the winter they stay on the bed and are simply worked into the ground the following year.