CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE - Growing common birdsfoot

Besides improving the physical, chemical, hydrological and biological properties of soil, species such as serradella can be used as animal feed.

Serradella is a winter-growing, annual legume with a semierect to erect growth. It can also form stolons/creepers. It has a deep root system and can form creepers as long as 1m. It has the ability to grow on soils that are poor and not suitable for other forage crops.

There are two common cultivars of serradella, the French or pink- flowered Ornithopus sativus, and the O. compressus with yellow flowers.

Serradella’s growing season lasts from autumn to spring, and it can grow at altitudes as high as 1 500m above sea level with an annual rainfall of between 300mm to 700m.

Pink serradella is not frost tolerant and is moderately drought tolerant. Yellow serradella can tolerate deep, sandy, acidic soils.

This species is also susceptible to waterlogged conditions and unsuited to alkaline soils. “Supplemental irrigation can play an important role in increased production. The hard-seeded and deep root system characteristics of the species facilitate the establishment and persistence of this species in soils with low fertility,” say Dr Wayne Truter et al in their article on serradella for Grain SA.

Soft-seeded pink serradella shows very similar growth properties as a fodder plant on more infertile sandy soils.

Pink serradella is often used as a nurse crop (a crop planted in the same field with another crop to minimise the growth of weeds) for yellow serradella, improving its establishment.

These species tend to do best on well-drained and fertile soils.

WEED-FREE SEEDBED