Yellow blossom sweet clover is a cold tolerant biennial that is very easy to establish. Drought and cold tolerant, use for erosion control on saline and alkaline soils. Matures 10 to 14 days earlier than White Blossom Sweet Clover. Sweet clover has long been known for its efficiency as a soil builder. When grown to maturity and plowed down, a good stand adds 80 to 100 lbs. of nitrogen/acre, as well as 2,000-3,500 lbs/acre of dry matter. It also improves soil drainage because its vigorous tap root penetrates heavy soils and hardpan allowing water to drain away.

For proper nodulation to occur, sweet clover requires a soil pH above 6.5, and it has a higher calcium requirement as well. It is able to obtain phosphorus from relatively unavailable soil phosphates and will grow on soils where alfalfa, red clover and ladino fail. Sweet clover is tolerant of poorly drained and flooded soils, however, it is also drought tolerant and winterhardy. In early summer of its second year it can grow to a height of 4 to 6 feet. The yellow blossoms attract honeybees and beneficial predatory wasps.

As forage, sweet clover has some disadvantages. Its course stems, somewhat bitter taste and odor make it unpalatable to some livestock. Care must also be taken to make sure moldy sweet clover hay is not fed to livestock, since it contains a high level of coumarin. When mold occurs during hay or silage making, coumarin can be converted to dicumarol, an anticoagulant that can cause internal bleeding of animals consuming the forage. The solution, if you suspect that the feed might contain dicumarol, lessen the danger by feeding the sweet clover hay for about two weeks and then follow with another type of hay for three weeks.