Articles
Tree Lucerne
Tree Lucerne is often called Tagasaste. It is a stock food and good windbreak to 4m tall. Pruning may keep it to 2m for easy access.
As a highly nutritious legume it can be cut and fed to stock and is good all-round with poultry and winter bee fodder.
Tagasaste is frost tolerant evergreen when mature and prefers well drained slightly alkaline soils but is hardy in other situations once established. Mature plants tolerate drought and frost. It is thought of as the temperate equivalent of leucaena.
If you are looking for bulk seeds and purchase when you buy Tree Lucerne seeds online from Eden Seeds you will also receive the specific inoculants for Tree Lucerne. To cover the prepared seeds with inoculants mix seeds, milk powder and inoculants. The inoculants will feed on the milk powder until the seed germinates. Then it well live a symbiotic relationship in the roots of the Tree Lucerne to provide nitrogen to the tree.
Sown seeds will sit for weeks or months until it thinks it is ready.
To get a more uniform germination seeds can be scarified. So the seed can be filed until the casing is broken then planted or just as effectively treated with hot water by placing the seed in a cup and pouring boiling water over them. Leave the seed overnight and the ones which have swollen and ready to sow.
