Alfalfa as a landscape plant

[bob prohaska]

Just for fun I'm trying to propagate alfalfa as a landscape plant. There seem to be a few feral plants along roadsides that can stay green well into summer with no irrigation. The flowers aren't spectacular, but pleasant to look at.

The goal is a low -(ideally, -zero) water groundcover around the house that also fixes nitrogen. Pollinator habitat is a plus.

Anybody else tried it?

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

[songbird]

i've used it as a green manure crop. it takes a few years to get a decent sized plant established before you would want to trim it. the stem part of the plant is not pleasant to walk on so you wouldn't want this as a lawn plant where you plan on walking barefoot.

i also used birdsfoot trefoil.

both are excellent green manure plants. can be harvested a few times a season depending upon where you are at.

downsides. both can drop a lot of seeds and the trefoil is even more so able to spread those seeds around.

i've been removing the trefoil as it just spreads those seeds too much. instead i am now using a low growing creeping thyme. takes more time to weed and is not a green manure crop, but it works much better as an edge plant.

i didn't transplant any alfalfa but planted from seeds. with the deep roots that alfalfa can get it wouldn't be that fun to transplant. just get a few seeds and then grow them. i recommend using a nursery crop (buckwheat) when spreading alfalfa for a larger area. the buckwheat will help keep weeds down and protect the alfalfa while it gets established.

songbird

[John McGaw]

Well, I've got safflower plants coming up in great numbers where the seeds were dropped from the bird feeder and the squirrels, chipmunks, and ground-feeding birds failed to pick them up. After I finally run out of seed and the animals leave the area I'll have to figure out how to clean out all of them along with the detritus from between the river rocks that cover the area.

[bob prohaska]

I tried starting from seed, but pillbugs, snails and slugs ate the vast majority of the alfalfa sprouts. Then I found

gave it a try, expecting a minimal success rate.

The initial success rate was over 50%, and likely most of my failures were from wrong (excessive) watering, as I was using containers. Direct starts in the ground work around 75% of the time. Growth is rapid, with blooming in a couple of months. Root development is surprisingly good, quickly coiling in the bottom of a 1-quart pot. The first heat test is coming up this weekend, with 100+F temps forecast through the coming week.

It isn't at all apparent that the taproot is essential. Maybe, but at least it's possible to set up an initial population. If it needs irrigation for the first year that's no worse than seedlings.

The risk of alfalfa becoming a nuisance seems minimal; it's been grown around here (southern Sacramento valley) for over a century and is still not commonplace. A spectacular contrast to star thistle.....8-(

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska