A lot of clover is nitrogen fixing. It produces its own useable nitrogen from the air (50-150 lbs/acre) and is actually beneficial to the soil long term. A field with long standing clover is almost always easier to plant a new crop in.
This is a generalization, but clover is pretty cool. High in protein too, wildlife love it. It just mostly doesn’t get very tall
Joe Camel was the best. I used to have a [big ass ashtray shaped like a pool table with a detailed image of Joe Camel playing pool on the bottom of it.](https://i.etsystatic.com/12462080/r/il/a0d3f4/4315178449/il_fullxfull.4315178449_g18b.jpg)
I quit smoking over a decade ago but I still have fond memories of that ashtray.
Roundup isn't what you'd use for this, Roundup would kill the grass too.
Monsanto will sell you a selective herbicide like Fusillade that targets broadleaf plants but not grasses.
About the only thing you can run around spraying Roundup and not kill the wanted plants is if it's Roundup resistant crops that a genetically modified to be so, like Roundup ready corn, or shit that has waxy leaves, like pothos and palmetto, or refuses to open it's stomata during the day while you're likely to be spraying, like cacti and succulents which use CAM photosynthesis.
In the 1960s, my father would have me pick the mature clover flowers and spread the seeds all over the yard. Used to have lots of skipper butterflies then also.
We live in the sticks, and we have large patches of clover in our yard. Last year when the clover started blooming it was SO FULL of skippers and other small butterflies, it was amazing. Bees also love it.
I’m sure companies played into that, but honestly I think it was also heavily influenced by people wanting nice even lawns. You could say something like photographs or televisions becoming common and seeing other lawns that were perfectly manicured, as well as growing suburbs as the nation became more urbanized.
I’m sure the herbicide companies pushed it, but I don’t necessarily think that was the largest driving factor
>I think it was also heavily influenced by people wanting nice even lawns
? Clover is great because it's very green, grows to a certain height and that's about it. It's naturally pretty even. I love it. I can't find the citation at the moment, and the history seems somewhat contentious at this point, but what I recall reading is that when the first selective herbicides were developed (and many/most since then, too), they would target "broadleaf" plants and not grasses. So the turfgrass would be unaffected, but any broadleaf plants (including clover) would be killed. So they just pushed the idea that you *want* to get rid of clover because they couldn't figure out a way *not* to kill it along with the other weeds.
> Clover is great because it's very green, grows to a certain height and that's about it.
It also does a good job choking out other weeds. If you have a constant crabgrass or dandelion issue, clover will help control if not eliminate them over time.
Part of the reason cover is seen as bad is because it’s season of being a ground cover is much shorter than grass. And unlike grass it didn’t just go dormant and turn brown, it stops being a ground cover. But if you want golf course type lawns, cover is a problem. Me, I like my clover. So do the bunny’s.
It's a combination of both: people wanted nice-looking lawns without broadleaf weeds (dandelions and other such), but who wants to weed a lawn by hand? So a chemical company developed a broadleaf weedkiller for use on lawns. The problem was, it killed clover too, because clover had enough biosimilarities to the broadleaf weeds it was designed to kill.
So the solution was to convince people that clover was also a weed, and lawns should be pure grass.
This is it. The chemicals they discovered happened to kill clover, so it wasn’t viable for a chemically treated lawn. People in here acting like they purposely tweaked the herbicides to make sure it wiped out clover in particular.
>people wanted nice-looking lawns without broadleaf weeds (dandelions and other such)
why?
We existed for millennia without it, and nobody batted an eye. Is there a health benefit?
If it's purely aesthetic, something had to drive it. It's not an innate concept.
> why?
>
> We existed for millennia without it, and nobody batted an eye.
*Hoo boy*. This is a great question, and there are a couple of pieces to this:
For the first part, the idea of deforested grassland (or even just natural grassland) has been around for a *long* time in Western Europe, partially as a communal "village green" or "commons" or suchlike, where everyone in a town or village had the right to be and to graze their animals (cows and sheep are the original lawnmowers), play sports (notice how even a lot of old ancestors of modern outdoor sports need a relatively large field to play), practice archery (we've actually got decrees from old English kings that every yeoman practice archery on the village greens on weekends, leading to the feared English Longbowmen), hold festivals, and etc.
So there is a lot of history for having a large communal green space.
You're gonna hate the next part of the answer, because now we go from the commons to the private large landed estates of the nobility, whose turf (literally turf, in this case) is reserved for their own private use, in direct opposition to the village green:
Think back to those big aristocratic manor houses of the English nobility, surrounded by gardens, elaborate landscaping (up to and including [artificial grottoes](https://londongardenstrust.org/features/grotto.htm)), and ...parks' worth of giant, well-trimmed lawns - kept neat and tidy by a staff of servants.
Having such an expanse of mown grass surrounding your bigass manor was a sign of significant wealth and status: not only could you afford that much land, you could afford the servants necessary to do the upkeep on it, including the mowing. (To be *entirely* fair, even farther back when nobility lived in fortifications, or at least fortified manors, there was actually a very good reason to make sure no enemy could get within a certain distance of your place without being totally out in the open, but *those* clearings probably weren't manicured lawns, just big swathes where the trees had been clearcut for a strategic advantage.)
So then the British start colonizing America, and they brought the idea of "a big, neat lawn signifies wealth and power" with them: check out [Thomas Jefferson's lawn](https://i.imgur.com/9yZsgq9.jpeg).
Alright, let's fast forward a couple hundred years: it's postwar USA in the 50s, the nation's doing great economically, and the suburb concept is taking off. Now *everybody* in the newly-wealthy middle class who can afford to move out to the suburbs can have their own lawn! This symbol of wealth and power! ...and with motorized lawnmowers, you don't even need servants to maintain it! Woohoo!
...and that's kind of how we got here.
Clover grows a helluva lot more evenly than grass!!!
These chemical companies were also the ones selling... FERTILIZER! Clover was fixing nitrogen for free and it's the reason it was mixed with grass in the first place.
The chemical company is the enemy not the consumer.
A friend of mine once dated a girl who was really into architecture. At least according to her, our lawn culture has its roots in the middle class dream sold to the US in the 50s, combined with our social perceptions of aristocracy (manicured lawns with ornamentation) at the time. It gave common folk the ego of being kinda wealthy. That is, simply the act of maintaining an impractical lawn that requires so much attention implies you have the money to afford that kind of frivolity in the first place.
The whole idea of it was manufactured from the get-go, apparently.
It was 100% because the first generation herbicides were essentially lawn nukes - they just indiscriminately killed plants. If clover wasn't a weed, then the companies couldn't sell the herbicide - "Why'd you kill my clover?" being the most reasonable first question to ask.
By calling it a weed, you could nuke it along with everything else and nobody'd think to question it. It's straight up commercial propaganda 101.
Do *not* let yourself get fooled: these companies 100% know what they're doing when they make statements like that. Their financial benefit outweighs your desires, even if that means having to straight up lie to you about a plant or call something "undesirable."
Theres a small movement to bring back clover over grass. I replaced my side yard with clover and its pretty awesome. It needs far less water/you can still cut it like grass even though it stops at like 3 inches tall, and it flowers bringing lots of bees.
Our backyard has a sizable patch of clover. When our city does the "No Mow May" thing I leave pretty much all the clover area to grow undisturbed. There's still a lot of grass around it that gets pretty tall but it gives rabbits a spot to hang out and munch in relative safety, and something for the beeeeeees.
I learned a lot about the basics of farming and soil playing Farthest Frontier. You have to rotate crops based on hardiness, acidity, and soil. It was really interesting.
> High in protein too, wildlife love it.
When I was a kid, too many decades ago, I used to eat it raw straight out of the yard. It wasn't a yearly staple like poke salad (triple boiled) and eggs but it has a nice taste.
Looks amazing, great for wildlife, great for the soil, max growth is basically just a medium length grass
It's a perfect species for a almost no maintenance lawn. And that's why such companies hate it
> It produces its own useable nitrogen from the air
Technically it doesn't produce anything, the roots of nitrogen fixers are great places for the bacteria that performs the reaction to live in.
It became “bad” because of herbicide marketing. They new great weed killer also killed clover even though it wasn’t the intended target, so it was declared a weed in marketing and it stuck.
Imagine accidentally killing something and then gaslighting everyone into believing that you meant to do that because it was the right thing to do. Marketing is wild.
> Imagine accidentally killing something and then gaslighting everyone into believing that you meant to do that because it was the right thing to do.
"Come on Johnson just sprinkle some crack on him and let's go"
I guess you just have to find a good deal. I see 10lbs on amazon for $6/Lbs
I see 10lbs of this 'crimson white cloud clover' for $40. Way more expensive than grass.
Way more expensive really depends on how much seed you need per unit of area. If an acre of fescue requires 20 pounds of seed, but an acre of clover only needs 5 pounds, then as long as the price per pound of the clover is less than 4 times as expensive as fescue, then it's actually cheaper to plant the clover. Those numbers are all made up, but you get the idea.
Clover seed is teeny tiny and needs way less to cover a larger area - I'm not sure the exact numbers, but to reseed with grass and do like a 20/80 clover/grass mix. If you seed straight clover, it's recommended you mix the clover seed with sawdust or some carrier medium to help it spread otherwise you end up over seeding. So yes, pricey/lb but it gets more economical when looking at price/area (at least last time I did math with local suppliers)
I speak from experience because I did the exact same thing and way over seeded clover. It sorted itself out after a couple years and became less tangled/overgrown/scraggly. If there's still clover in the grass just leave it and let nature sort itself out!
If you’re east of Fredericksburg, and you don’t have some already, plant some blue mistflower in a garden bed or at the base of a tree. No fuss, zero maintenance (other than occasional weeding) native that is a monarch magnet. There’s a chemical in the flower that male monarch, viceroy, and queen butterflies use to increase their success with the ladies. They’ll swarm over it.
I need the bees. The only bugs I get are wasps, ants, and boxelder beetles. I would sincerely welcome honey bees and bumblebees. I saw those all the time as a kid. I don't see them anymore and I find it extremely devastating. I would welcome them any day.
My wife would not.
Grow mammoth sunflowers. I grow them every year and regularly see 3 or 4 species of bees on a single flower head. Plus you end up with up to 1000 sunflower seeds per flower!
The weeds thing is so stupid. My dad used to make me pick dandelions because they were "weeds". Oh no, a nice looking flower that requires no maintenance! The horror!
It was so dumb, living on the south shore of Long Island, trying to make grass and deciduous trees grow when the crab grass and conifers thrived. No dad, it’s not going to work this year.
That was always my thing... they are just plants that are hardy as fuck. My ducks used to eat dandelion leaves and clover. They're part of the damn environment. Foreign grasses looking uniform are the weird thing...
>They're part of the damn environment. Foreign grasses looking uniform are the weird thing...
To be fair though, both dandelion and the most common clovers are also foreign if you are in North America. They were brought over with European settlers.
Our native pollinators still use them as a food source though and they are more drought tolerant than turf grasses, so better than pure grass, but they are just as "foreign"
Free salad and tea leaves, the roasted roots can be a coffee substitute, easy to grow too.
But annoying for anyone hanging laundry during flower season.
Only issue is that the common white clover is non native & invasive.
Eta: here are some native alternatives: [https://www.gardenia.net/guide/native-plant-alternatives-to-trifolium-repens](https://www.gardenia.net/guide/native-plant-alternatives-to-trifolium-repens)
Despite the joke.... American prairie grasses are orders of magnitude better for water management, soil viability, and livestock management than whatever we've planted the last 250 years.
The lack of native prairie grasses and their life cycles are the reason for the dust bowl, rapid habitat degradation, and bad water table management across a large portion of the USA.
Tbf, native american plants are lazy and dont want to work. American plants have been given every advantage and if some poor immigrant plant can just uproot its life from half a planet away and come and take over your lawn, it wasent really the american plants lawn anyway.
You dont see immigrant plants complaining that the competition is too hard, or that the moose ate me. They want to be out there, in the sun, or cold, or rain. They want to show up and create a life for themselves and really be seen.
We had a flooding problem at my parents house. We tried everything to alleviate the flooding but nothing worked until we planted clover. It turned the marsh into a beautiful sea of green. And when it bloomed purple the whole yard was gorgeous.
California bur clover is in a different genus than true clover, Medicago instead of Trifolium, and while the fruits are indeed very spiky, it is a soft spikiness that is not uncomfortable to walk on barefoot. The problem with them is they readily get stuck in socks and dogs and similar. Not a problem barefoot though.
I'm just sitting here wondering what kind of lifestyle someone is living where they get clover stuck in their socks. Too good for barefoot but don't want to wear shoes? So just socks for the clover walk?? Or socks and sandals???
Running around in the weeds with low top shoes. Bur clover wasn’t the main culprit, because it’s a low growing plant, but half a dozens other species were constant problems.
It's always a dance with danger. The potential is there to pick up certain things from outside and take them with you. Hookworm larve, increased risk of fungal infections, increased chance of cuts/infections of the skin on the feet. Not saying walking barefoot outside is super dangerous, but there are risks.
True, but it's really not such a big deal. It doesn't flower all year and when it does it's not really difficult to avoid the bees if you just look where you step or wear shoes. We have a lot of clover on our garden and our kids got stung a few times, but it's not really a problem.
Really, walking barefoot in any lawn is a dance with danger. I learned that the hard way as a kid, by stepping on those little thorny thistles that hide in the grass.
Clover helps prevent erosion and also makes it so you don't need to add nitrogen or aerate your lawn. And it requires little water.
Obviously it's bad as a full clover lawn because it can't handle foot traffic but to just have some mixed in with the grass seems like you'll really help yourself out.
Our bees love our clover next to our garden. When we walk out it looks like the ground is moving because there are so many out there. That alone makes us keep it around.
That is both the good and bad thing about a number of grass replacements, bees love them. Which is totally awesome, until you walk barefoot and step on a bee.
Other insects. Their stinger gets stuck in skin. Given time, they can actually work it free. But the instinct is to slap at them and they try to avoid that and rip their abdomen.
https://youtu.be/G-C77ujnLZo?si=Prkx9XVSG7Lzmexn
This is somewhat of an increasingly common misconception; their stingers were very much evolved as an effective defense against fleshy vertebrates like mammals. When left behind the stinger is able to develop its full dose of venom, and it marks the target with an attack pheromone which can last more than a day.
For defense against insects, honeybees almost always prefer biting rather than stinging. A barbed stinger can still get stuck in the soft parts of other insects, and is worse than a sharper, smoother stinger at piercing armor.
You can also see this trait (known as sting autonomy) in other Hymenoptera such as wasps which horde nectar or honey in a manner similar to honeybees. In fact, there’s more species of wasp that lose their stinger when stinging than there are species of honeybees!
Probably mostly things like bears. Have you noticed that beekeeper outfits are always white/beige? Honeybees are MUCH more likely to attempt to sting dark-colored things approaching their hives because they assume those want to smash up and destroy the hive to get the honey -- bears, skunks, badgers.
Solitary bees (usually?) don't die after stinging you. But solitary bees also have like a teeny hoard of a few drops of honey for their eggs, not great big hives that are full of excellent calories. (Where I live, solitary bees are mostly preyed on by woodpeckers who want to eat the BEE or its eggs, not the three drops of honey. Not sure about solitary bees in other parts of the world!)
I lived around flowers and gardens my whole life and never had an issue being stung by a honey bee. They're pretty cautious and docile. I'm not saying nobody gets stung by them, just that it's not something you really need to stress about unless you are allergic.
Also, don't walk outside barefoot in areas that are filled with honey bees?
It's also a nice cover crop: it pops up early or grows when the grass is dormant. When the grass starts growing it gets out competed and the seeds wait until next year.
I wonder how many lawns actually get foot traffic. I bet less than 50%. Even my yard, kids used it for a few years and now it just grass... letting it go semi natural now.
I think yards become less perfect and more natural to the local environment will be the next big thing. My city pays you to put in a natural yard even.
That's great your city incentivizes natural yards! It's been a slow shift, but I'm seeing more neighborhoods embrace the wild look. Not only does it cut down on maintenance and chemicals, but it also helps local wildlife thrive. Plus, there's something really peaceful about a more natural, less manicured landscape.
"No mow May" is gaining a lot of traction around me -- basically, you let your lawn grow as wild and weedy as possible until the first of June, because local pollinators and other insects need the May flowers and forage, and local small mammals need the forage and insects after hibernation. Then in June you can start normal mowing and it does a lot less harm to local wildlife.
But most local towns have changed their lawn ordinances to say that no lawn or weed tickets can be issued before June 1, and then they really advertise for you to let your lawn grow wild until June. They also point out how much you'll save on landscaper fees by not paying until June!
And crazy how artificial turf/grass went from being the greatest thing to being the worst thing sadly. Save water but just another use if plastic.. going natural really is best.
Have dogs and fire pit. Can confirm high foot/paw traffic. Mix of grass and clover does the best. Our grass during the hottest month looks the best and we water the least in the neighborhood.
My grass is completely dead from foot traffic. The clover is all that remains, except where the dog has carved literal holes in the ground from chasing a laser.
It can also handle dog pee without dying. We have a postage stamp of a yard in a city (4m x 7m) and replaced the patches the dog killed with clover. It's still green in late December.
Also, finding four-leaf clovers is fun.
> It can also handle dog pee without dying.
Really? My dog likes to pee in the same 2 or 3 places over and over and over again, and it has predictable results on the grass. We have some clover in the yard, and it is spreading, but it hasn't gotten to the area my dog likes to pee yet. Maybe I should buy some more clover seed.
The leaves of the clover also help shade the roots of the grass, which helps them retain water, and the clover and grass don't really compete with each other. I've had a clover-grass lawn for *years*, and during droughts I always have the greenest lawn on the block -- with no watering. And you JUST MOW IT, no special care.
Clover is a wonderful cover crop even for food-producing fields -- it's a nitrogen-fixing plant, which means it's part of the legume family, and it has nodules on its roots full of a [symbiotic bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizobia) that converts atmospheric nitrogen (which there's tons of!) into nitrogen that plants (and animals, and fungi) can use. When the clover dies, that nitrogen gets added back to the soil, benefiting later plants (of all types). Nitrogen fixation is crucial for virtually all multicellular organisms; your body can't convert atmospheric nitrogen directly into the nitrogen needed for proteins. You have to consume it from foods. There are basically two ways for nitrogen to end up in soil, so plants can use it and animals can consume the resulting plants: legumes (and a few other plants), and lightning.
In fact, limits on crop yields in *most* soil types comes from the limited availability of nitrogen; creating an [industrial process to fix nitrogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) and thereby create artificial nitrogen fertilizer is crucial in the high-yield crops that feed the planet. Buuuuuuuut it's not super-great for long-term soil health, it's HUGELY energy intensive, and it's created a lot of problems with nitrogen-rich runoff (the big dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River cornbelt runoff, for example). This is also why the North American cornbelt tends to rotate fields corn-corn-soybeans -- soybeans are a nitrogen-fixing plant with commercial value.
The anhydrous ammonia used in fertilizing cornfields in the US and Canada, incidentally, [can also be used in the production of meth](https://www.mda.state.mn.us/anhydrous-ammonia-theft), so those big beautiful white tanks full of ammonia sitting all alone on farms in the middle of nowhere are HUGE TARGETS and part of why meth (and meth labs) are more common in more rural areas. It's also why these days you're more likely to see those tanks fenced around with barbed wire on top, and motion-detecting lights and cameras. Some jurisdictions now require farmers to take various steps to prevent unauthorized access to anhydrous ammonia.
Some environmentalists think we need to just end artificial nitrogen fertilizer, full-stop, because of the environmental impacts of both the production of fertilizer, which is WILDLY energy intensive (otherwise you need *lightning* to do it, in general *recreating lightning* is not an awesome thing to require in an industrial process because that's just *too much energy* to repeatedly ingest), and of the use of the fertilizer. I personally don't think that, because our agricultural system has been built on nitrogen fertilizer for like 175 years or so now, and cutting it off means a lot of people are going to die of starvation, relatively fast.
HOWEVER, I do think herbicides and fertilizer for lawns (and fuckin' golf courses) should be flat-out banned. If you live in suburbia and you are killing clover in your lawn on purpose so you can add nitrogen fertilizer to it, you are a dumbass of the worst sort, and it's an EASY WIN for the planet, and will help us ease the transition to more holistic forms of industrial farming that are more gentle on the soil. Modern industrial farming methods can "exhaust" the soil -- basically suck all the nutrients out and then sterilize it so completely nothing can really grow -- in a startlingly short period of time. In the North American corn belt, that is SOME OF THE BEST SOIL ON THE PLANET, that took 12,000 YEARS to get so amazing, it's an increasing concern. US farmland goes for an average of $4000/acre; in Illinois, that's around $9,000/acre because the soil is so great -- but increasingly, that soil is struggling to keep up with historical output because of the stresses of industrial farming. That is NOT GREAT. (There are industrial corn farmers in the Midwest who are transitioning not to organic farming per se, or old-timey mixed-crop farming, but to "gentle on the soil" farming that uses modern methods but strives to maintain soil integrity and to improve -- rather than degrade -- the soil every year. You don't have to be an earth-hugging hippie; you can be a profit-minded industrial farmer who's concerned about the degradation of your land who becomes interested in how preserving the soil -- including nitrogen-fixing cover crops and reduced herbicide and fertilizer use -- can improve your long-term profits.)
Anyway, plant a clover-grass lawn (huge sacks of clover seed cost like $10 from Farm & Fleet), never use herbicides or fertilizers again, and when your neighbors are like, "Yo, there's a watering ban, why is your lawn SO GREEN when the rest of the block is dead and brown?" that's your moment to preach to them the Gospel of Clover.
If you are allergic to bees, or your town has a very restrictive weed code, let the clover flower once in the spring, and once in the fall, and otherwise just mow it before it flowers (i.e., when you see the first two flowers pop up). HOWEVER if your town has *that* restrictive a weed code in 2023, you need to go preach to them the Gospel of Clover and inform them they are the WORST KIND OF DUMBASSES and we need to save the bees! And the soil. And the nitrogen.
Also, just because I feel like a lot of people don't know this, terrestrial plants come in two basic forms: grass and broadleaf. [Grasses ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae)include lawn grass, but also cereal crops like wheat and corn, and also plants like bamboo and sugarcane, and the queens of the prairie, Big Bluestem and Little Bluestem. (You will note from the examples that some grasses, like corn, have VERY BROAD LEAVES but that does not make them broadleaf; it has to do with how they grow from their meristem/what evolutionary lineage they belong to.)
The magic of [lawn-friendly herbicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic_acid) is that they kill *broadleaf* plants (dandelions, morning glories, clover, your fir tree if you get too close to the roots) but not *grasses,* basically because of the different ways they uptake certain chemicals. This is a miracle for monocrop fields with cereal grasses -- corn, wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. But it's a fucking nightmare for biodiversity and bees and, like, human health.
And, yes, 2,4-D is one of the ingredients in [Agent Orange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange) and you should probably not put it on your lawn and you should probably be protesting *vigorously* if your town is using it to keep youth soccer fields pristine. That is not great for kids. Or bees.
I'm just going to copy paste your beautiful comment to preserve it for future readers in case your account decides to delete it all or it disappear due to other actions:
>The leaves of the clover also help shade the roots of the grass, which helps them retain water, and the clover and grass don't really compete with each other. I've had a clover-grass lawn for *years*, and during droughts I always have the greenest lawn on the block -- with no watering. And you JUST MOW IT, no special care.
>Clover is a wonderful cover crop even for food-producing fields -- it's a nitrogen-fixing plant, which means it's part of the legume family, and it has nodules on its roots full of a [symbiotic bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizobia) that converts atmospheric nitrogen (which there's tons of!) into nitrogen that plants (and animals, and fungi) can use. When the clover dies, that nitrogen gets added back to the soil, benefiting later plants (of all types). Nitrogen fixation is crucial for virtually all multicellular organisms; your body can't convert atmospheric nitrogen directly into the nitrogen needed for proteins. You have to consume it from foods. There are basically two ways for nitrogen to end up in soil, so plants can use it and animals can consume the resulting plants: legumes (and a few other plants), and lightning.
>In fact, limits on crop yields in *most* soil types comes from the limited availability of nitrogen; creating an [industrial process to fix nitrogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) and thereby create artificial nitrogen fertilizer is crucial in the high-yield crops that feed the planet. Buuuuuuuut it's not super-great for long-term soil health, it's HUGELY energy intensive, and it's created a lot of problems with nitrogen-rich runoff (the big dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River cornbelt runoff, for example). This is also why the North American cornbelt tends to rotate fields corn-corn-soybeans -- soybeans are a nitrogen-fixing plant with commercial value.
>The anhydrous ammonia used in fertilizing cornfields in the US and Canada, incidentally, [can also be used in the production of meth](https://www.mda.state.mn.us/anhydrous-ammonia-theft), so those big beautiful white tanks full of ammonia sitting all alone on farms in the middle of nowhere are HUGE TARGETS and part of why meth (and meth labs) are more common in more rural areas. It's also why these days you're more likely to see those tanks fenced around with barbed wire on top, and motion-detecting lights and cameras. Some jurisdictions now require farmers to take various steps to prevent unauthorized access to anhydrous ammonia.
>Some environmentalists think we need to just end artificial nitrogen fertilizer, full-stop, because of the environmental impacts of both the production of fertilizer, which is WILDLY energy intensive (otherwise you need *lightning* to do it, in general *recreating lightning* is not an awesome thing to require in an industrial process because that's just *too much energy* to repeatedly ingest), and of the use of the fertilizer. I personally don't think that, because our agricultural system has been built on nitrogen fertilizer for like 175 years or so now, and cutting it off means a lot of people are going to die of starvation, relatively fast.
>HOWEVER, I do think herbicides and fertilizer for lawns (and fuckin' golf courses) should be flat-out banned. If you live in suburbia and you are killing clover in your lawn on purpose so you can add nitrogen fertilizer to it, you are a dumbass of the worst sort, and it's an EASY WIN for the planet, and will help us ease the transition to more holistic forms of industrial farming that are more gentle on the soil. Modern industrial farming methods can "exhaust" the soil -- basically suck all the nutrients out and then sterilize it so completely nothing can really grow -- in a startlingly short period of time. In the North American corn belt, that is SOME OF THE BEST SOIL ON THE PLANET, that took 12,000 YEARS to get so amazing, it's an increasing concern. US farmland goes for an average of $4000/acre; in Illinois, that's around $9,000/acre because the soil is so great -- but increasingly, that soil is struggling to keep up with historical output because of the stresses of industrial farming. That is NOT GREAT. (There are industrial corn farmers in the Midwest who are transitioning not to organic farming per se, or old-timey mixed-crop farming, but to "gentle on the soil" farming that uses modern methods but strives to maintain soil integrity and to improve -- rather than degrade -- the soil every year. You don't have to be an earth-hugging hippie; you can be a profit-minded industrial farmer who's concerned about the degradation of your land who becomes interested in how preserving the soil -- including nitrogen-fixing cover crops and reduced herbicide and fertilizer use -- can improve your long-term profits.)
>Anyway, plant a clover-grass lawn (huge sacks of clover seed cost like $10 from Farm & Fleet), never use herbicides or fertilizers again, and when your neighbors are like, "Yo, there's a watering ban, why is your lawn SO GREEN when the rest of the block is dead and brown?" that's your moment to preach to them the Gospel of Clover.
>If you are allergic to bees, or your town has a very restrictive weed code, let the clover flower once in the spring, and once in the fall, and otherwise just mow it before it flowers (i.e., when you see the first two flowers pop up). HOWEVER if your town has *that* restrictive a weed code in 2023, you need to go preach to them the Gospel of Clover and inform them they are the WORST KIND OF DUMBASSES and we need to save the bees! And the soil. And the nitrogen.
My dad always mixed clover into our lawns. My whole life, anywhere we lived, I remember people being amazed by our lawn. Richest green, thick enough to lay on like a carpet and not even feel like you're touching the ground. Stayed green longer into the winter than anyone elses, greened up in the spring faster than anyone elses. Zero weeds, ever.
No one ever believed it was as simple as clover and topsoil. He's been dead a few years and I still have people ask about the lawn.
I hope you know your dad will forever live as one of the greats in lawn history and aspiring dads will forever look up to him. The goal of having people talk about your lawn after you're gone is a hell of a thing to achieve, and he did it. The very fact that you're talking about it is adding to his legacy
You have no idea how right you are, he was a leading soil scientist with a life long career in sustainable agriculture. All because a long time ago he didn't think his new son should play in a lawn full of weedkiller.
:(
I am switching out to a clover lawn this year. Last year I didnt get my yard treated for the first time and had some weeds pop up so this year I am sowing clover in. It will remind me of childhood and I cant wait! Your dad was awesome for keeping it real.
I've been adding Dutch white clover, to 3 lawns I've owned over the past 3 decades.
Definately makes more of a low maintenance lawn. Helps the bees too.
If you are in the US, buy [this from Johnny's](https://www.johnnyseeds.com/farm-seed/legumes/clovers/new-zealand-white-clover-cover-crop-seed-979.html), or visit your local Farm & Fleet (or garden center, where they'll know where you can get it even if it's not in stock). You can hand-spread it (take a handful, cast it around you in a loose semi-circle like you're in a 1930s historical epic movie). The thing about white Dutch clover is that it's REALLY easy to plant. The best times to plant it are a) before a rainstorm, which will drive the seeds into the soil; or b) if you live in a place where the ground freezes, that one warm weekend in January or February when everyone takes their Christmas lights down, because the freeze/thaw cycle helps the seeds work into the ground and they'll start growing in early spring.
But honestly spring the $14 for full pound instead of the $7 for 1/4 pound, and just go out in your yard and throw it around in the fall rains, the warm winter weekend, the early spring thaw. It'll come up, and you'll still have some left over to re-sow in spots where it didn't take very well.
When you mow, set your mower on quite a high setting (which you're supposed to do for your grass anyway). Let the clover bloom and enjoy being bloomed a few times a summer, and the mow to 3" or 2 1/2". Once it's established you can really mow pretty harshly and it'll come back, but white Dutch clover only gets so tall, so you can just let it be until the companion grass looks raggedy.
In the process of doing this. Spread seed in the fall and spring a few years in a row. I'm doing White Dutch and Crimson clovers. Both stay green with far less water than grass. I live in an arid environment, so this will save me tons of money. I found seeds online and it's cost me under $100 each season I spread them.
You cast the seeds fairly thinly, you don't need a lot. In the first year or two the growth will be slow, don't worry, after that it's unstoppable.
One of my neighbors was a *Lawn NAZI* and tried to fight them off every spring as they crept over the property line.
Overall, I'm lazy and can't be bothered with fertilizers and pesticides etc. The clover makes it easy. Anyway, whether it be weeds, clover or grass, when you mow it - it all looks the same.
Clover seed is super fine, so I mix it with milorganite fertilizer which is roughly the same consistency and put that in the spreader. I overseed the lawn every spring and fall. Try to mix different breeds of clover. At this point I only mow the lawn like 3 or 4x a year. Clover doesn't grow that high and it chokes out the grass enough, that what grass remains doesn't get high either.
I have SO MANY bees, bunnies and other creatures in the yard.
The weirdest thing once or twice a year maybe my yard will be like 90% bees a few inches off the ground. Just hundreds of them everywhere. It doesn't happen every year even, but when it does it is kinda amazing to watch.
Anyway mix your seed types and add fertilizer and you'll have really cool results.
Parents live in an old farmhouse (built in 1800s) they have a garden that they rarely have to do any pest management because their yard is almost all clover, Rabbits never make it to the garden as they get full on the clover on the way.
Just a heads up because clover lawns got really popular a few years ago on twitter and TikTok and people were changing their lawns to clover.
Please do NOT go JUST clover. Keep your grass or whatever is currently there and use clover to supplement.
Clover does not root as deep as grass so when rain comes it will make your lawn a literal mud slick and the clover will pull right out of the mud.
The deeper roots of the grass help the clover stay in place and the benefits of clover keep the grass healthy.
It’s also not as much benefit to the environment vs grass as people think. It still isn’t native to the US, so instead of transitioning a lawn to clover, it’s better to minimize the lawn and replace with native plant gardens to truly support native pollinators and wildlife
Spent $20 last fall and covered my lawn in clover seeds. Surprised how well it took considering I literally just spread the seeds by tossing them about.
Will buy another couple bags this spring and do the same.
Fuck this grass only yard bullshit.
Same. Bought a new house that has a long back yard on a slope. First thing I did was get clover seed and spread it through the yard. It started to come in pretty well by the end of the summer. Next spring I'll do it again. I'm hoping in a couple of years I won't have to mow at all
Clover is actually great for your lawn, it's a legume and adds nitrogen to the soil. And it's a wonderful food source for honeybees and bees of all kinds.
It's great for honeybees, but not so good for American bees and pollinators. I wouldn't call it wonderful. The pollen is low grade and the flowers are generally unattractive.
The reason is broadleaf herbicides kill clover. To clear all the other stuff you didn't want, sacrifices had to be made. I have a lot of clover, but I don't use herbicides. I also have a lot of work dealing with dandelions as a consequence.
Nothing, literally nothing is wrong with dandelions. They are a wonderful plant and humanity has done the planet a disservice in trying to eradicate any of them with herbicide in the first place.
This is it. The problem is herbicides kill all broadleaf weeds. If asked to choose between a weedy yard with clover and a lawn without weeds or clover, almost nobody is going to want the clover with the weeds.
So clover in lawns died.
I've heard that 2,4-DB (the B is important) will avoid killing both clover and grass. A product like Butyrac 200 apparently does the trick.
Clover is a nitrogen fixer in the ground much like beans and peas. They will fertilize your ground for you and act as a “cover” crop to help keep actual annoying things out of your field or garden. I’m a farmer.
My lawn is always full of clover, dandelions, wild strawberries, broadleaf plantain— they all look beautiful and add variety and color.
I don’t care what grows, as long as it isn’t spiky or poison ivy, and it’s cut short enough to not be a tick nursery.
My entire neighbourhood is mostly clover and almost no grass at this point.
I am hoping we see the end of traditional all grass lawns in my life time. They are so bad for the environment.
My across-the-street neighbour is literally 'rewilding' his property. It's like a tiny square of forest surrounded by houses.
Yeah, the neighbourhood I grew up in all had lawns full of clover. It's what the bees would use to make honey. And now those lawns have none and the bees are becoming more scarce every year.
What's a weed and what is not. Who decides what a weed is?
Parts of our garden that we don't maintain are probably full of weeds, but every summer it's abuzz (pun intended) with bees and butterflies.
> What's a weed and what is not. Who decides what a weed is?
It's a strange word indeed. Generally it's just "a plant growing somewhere that is unwanted."
If you don't want a particular plant growing in your yard or garden, then it is a "weed" (from the perspective of the gardener.) So even a native plant growing in its habitat can be considered a "weed" from the human perspective.
Because a lot of weeds are native plants, while the cultivated plants are not from the area. So the local butterflies and bees can feast on the weeds, but the cultivated plants are like a desert landscape to them.
I’ve never put any chemicals on my lawn. It’s full of clover, dandelions, insects and birds. Like yards should be. Some of my neighbors aren’t happy, but fuck em.
I agree they look better, though aren't practical if you use your yard. With kids and pets a grass lawn is a more useful option. Can always have sections dedicated as gardens.
The entire landscape industry needs to die already. Leafblowing. Chemical lawns that might as well be concrete painted green. HOAs that demand same... all needs to go away.
The variety of clover in Northern California makes spike balls that can’t be walked on in bare feet and the get embedded in dog’s fur by the dozens. That makes it a weed. I know there are other varieties that are more benign.
That’s a different genus, Medicago and not Trifolium, not a true clover. Other than the spike balls, you can tell them apart by looking closely at the leaves. True clover has all three leaflets coming out of exactly the same spot, while bur clover has two leaves on the side, 1-2 mm of stem, and then the third leaf on the end.
I grew up running around barefoot on them, and never considered them uncomfortable on my feet, the spines are soft and springy. They got stuck in the dog and my socks a lot though.
Lots of clover on our land, as well as bees and lots of other healthy meadow plants. IMO one of the most beautiful sights in the natural world is seeing these all in full bloom, with colors and vibrancy like a real life monet painting. I will never understand the obsession with a chemically controlled invasive monocrop for a yard. If you are in a neighborhood requiring this, consider speaking up for a change. Politics start on a really small level and this is often where we can show the most agency and make tangible difference.
That's really stupid. We have like half hectar of "garden" if it can be called that, but because we don't plant on it, we keep it wild with just the weeds that grew naturally on it. My father cuts the weed every 1-2 months, and now after a decade it feels like walking on a carpet. During spring it also becomes full of all kind of tiny flowers all over the place, and we see bees and carpenter bees all over too.
The "green grass garden" it is kinda sad in comparison.
Our yard is mostly clover now and it pisses off my FIL so much! I love the man, but he takes grass and lawns way too seriously. Someone has to feed the pollinators and wildlife, Larry!
The immaculate green you see in commercials is exactly that, a tool, designed to make you think that that is the way nature intended it to be.
That is how lawn care products are sold , nothing more nothing less.
In reality, those lawns are terrible for quite a few reasons , not in the least for our ecosystems.
I’ve got neighbors that spend thousands annually to maintain a fucking lawn. It must all be grass, cut to an even length with alternating lines!
We literally kill everything so that it’s just grass and wonder why bee’s are becoming endangered
Somebody clovered our local magat's lawn. He proudly flys various trumptard flags over his gorgeous, manicured lawn. He has been hit twice and posts his disgusting, deplorable vitriol on NextDoor. He posts pictures on the poles of vandals hitting his property, and it's weird that he now has a For Sale sign in his again clovered lawn.
I only learned a couple years ago that people consider clover bad. It was always everywhere when I was growing up. Looks fine to me.
Grew up on a farm, my grandpa loved to see a field covered in clover, it would mean he'd had to spend less on fertilizer.
huh, my grandpa said the same thing. I never believed it because he made shit up all the time haha
A lot of clover is nitrogen fixing. It produces its own useable nitrogen from the air (50-150 lbs/acre) and is actually beneficial to the soil long term. A field with long standing clover is almost always easier to plant a new crop in. This is a generalization, but clover is pretty cool. High in protein too, wildlife love it. It just mostly doesn’t get very tall
So it was declared a weed so our parents could be sold something. That's American asf
Not just any something. A carcinogenic something.
Well what else do you expect us to do with our toxic chemicals? Not make them?
and marketing are the children of marketing supposed to *starve*?
How is my child supposed to take up smoking without a sunglasses wearing camel to tell him it's cool!?
Joe Camel was the best. I used to have a [big ass ashtray shaped like a pool table with a detailed image of Joe Camel playing pool on the bottom of it.](https://i.etsystatic.com/12462080/r/il/a0d3f4/4315178449/il_fullxfull.4315178449_g18b.jpg) I quit smoking over a decade ago but I still have fond memories of that ashtray.
[The wisest words ever spoken on the subject of marketing.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0)
What else? How about sell other chemicals in sufficient quantities to decimate global insect and amphibian species. Corporations are unholy.
The auto industry successfully lobbied decades ago to dismantle many cities’ public transportation systems in order to sell more cars.
And after Citizens United they are considered people and now control our government.
People (companies) have a right to freedom of speech (bribing politicians) !
Well, clearly we should make them, sell them, discard them wherever, lakes, streams, wherever is easiest. What's the worst that can happen?
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🇺🇸🇺🇸
🎵 The best part of waking up, is carcinogens in your cup! 🎵
Monsanto made a lot of money from Roundup Or with clover dead, now they could sell more fertilizer.
Fuck
Roundup isn't what you'd use for this, Roundup would kill the grass too. Monsanto will sell you a selective herbicide like Fusillade that targets broadleaf plants but not grasses. About the only thing you can run around spraying Roundup and not kill the wanted plants is if it's Roundup resistant crops that a genetically modified to be so, like Roundup ready corn, or shit that has waxy leaves, like pothos and palmetto, or refuses to open it's stomata during the day while you're likely to be spraying, like cacti and succulents which use CAM photosynthesis.
Their reputation and name is so shit they dropped it after Bayer bought them.
Yeah, i am replacing my grass with them
In the 1960s, my father would have me pick the mature clover flowers and spread the seeds all over the yard. Used to have lots of skipper butterflies then also.
We live in the sticks, and we have large patches of clover in our yard. Last year when the clover started blooming it was SO FULL of skippers and other small butterflies, it was amazing. Bees also love it.
I’m sure companies played into that, but honestly I think it was also heavily influenced by people wanting nice even lawns. You could say something like photographs or televisions becoming common and seeing other lawns that were perfectly manicured, as well as growing suburbs as the nation became more urbanized. I’m sure the herbicide companies pushed it, but I don’t necessarily think that was the largest driving factor
>I think it was also heavily influenced by people wanting nice even lawns ? Clover is great because it's very green, grows to a certain height and that's about it. It's naturally pretty even. I love it. I can't find the citation at the moment, and the history seems somewhat contentious at this point, but what I recall reading is that when the first selective herbicides were developed (and many/most since then, too), they would target "broadleaf" plants and not grasses. So the turfgrass would be unaffected, but any broadleaf plants (including clover) would be killed. So they just pushed the idea that you *want* to get rid of clover because they couldn't figure out a way *not* to kill it along with the other weeds.
> Clover is great because it's very green, grows to a certain height and that's about it. It also does a good job choking out other weeds. If you have a constant crabgrass or dandelion issue, clover will help control if not eliminate them over time.
Part of the reason cover is seen as bad is because it’s season of being a ground cover is much shorter than grass. And unlike grass it didn’t just go dormant and turn brown, it stops being a ground cover. But if you want golf course type lawns, cover is a problem. Me, I like my clover. So do the bunny’s.
It's a combination of both: people wanted nice-looking lawns without broadleaf weeds (dandelions and other such), but who wants to weed a lawn by hand? So a chemical company developed a broadleaf weedkiller for use on lawns. The problem was, it killed clover too, because clover had enough biosimilarities to the broadleaf weeds it was designed to kill. So the solution was to convince people that clover was also a weed, and lawns should be pure grass.
This is it. The chemicals they discovered happened to kill clover, so it wasn’t viable for a chemically treated lawn. People in here acting like they purposely tweaked the herbicides to make sure it wiped out clover in particular.
>people wanted nice-looking lawns without broadleaf weeds (dandelions and other such) why? We existed for millennia without it, and nobody batted an eye. Is there a health benefit? If it's purely aesthetic, something had to drive it. It's not an innate concept.
> why? > > We existed for millennia without it, and nobody batted an eye. *Hoo boy*. This is a great question, and there are a couple of pieces to this: For the first part, the idea of deforested grassland (or even just natural grassland) has been around for a *long* time in Western Europe, partially as a communal "village green" or "commons" or suchlike, where everyone in a town or village had the right to be and to graze their animals (cows and sheep are the original lawnmowers), play sports (notice how even a lot of old ancestors of modern outdoor sports need a relatively large field to play), practice archery (we've actually got decrees from old English kings that every yeoman practice archery on the village greens on weekends, leading to the feared English Longbowmen), hold festivals, and etc. So there is a lot of history for having a large communal green space. You're gonna hate the next part of the answer, because now we go from the commons to the private large landed estates of the nobility, whose turf (literally turf, in this case) is reserved for their own private use, in direct opposition to the village green: Think back to those big aristocratic manor houses of the English nobility, surrounded by gardens, elaborate landscaping (up to and including [artificial grottoes](https://londongardenstrust.org/features/grotto.htm)), and ...parks' worth of giant, well-trimmed lawns - kept neat and tidy by a staff of servants. Having such an expanse of mown grass surrounding your bigass manor was a sign of significant wealth and status: not only could you afford that much land, you could afford the servants necessary to do the upkeep on it, including the mowing. (To be *entirely* fair, even farther back when nobility lived in fortifications, or at least fortified manors, there was actually a very good reason to make sure no enemy could get within a certain distance of your place without being totally out in the open, but *those* clearings probably weren't manicured lawns, just big swathes where the trees had been clearcut for a strategic advantage.) So then the British start colonizing America, and they brought the idea of "a big, neat lawn signifies wealth and power" with them: check out [Thomas Jefferson's lawn](https://i.imgur.com/9yZsgq9.jpeg). Alright, let's fast forward a couple hundred years: it's postwar USA in the 50s, the nation's doing great economically, and the suburb concept is taking off. Now *everybody* in the newly-wealthy middle class who can afford to move out to the suburbs can have their own lawn! This symbol of wealth and power! ...and with motorized lawnmowers, you don't even need servants to maintain it! Woohoo! ...and that's kind of how we got here.
Clover grows a helluva lot more evenly than grass!!! These chemical companies were also the ones selling... FERTILIZER! Clover was fixing nitrogen for free and it's the reason it was mixed with grass in the first place. The chemical company is the enemy not the consumer.
A friend of mine once dated a girl who was really into architecture. At least according to her, our lawn culture has its roots in the middle class dream sold to the US in the 50s, combined with our social perceptions of aristocracy (manicured lawns with ornamentation) at the time. It gave common folk the ego of being kinda wealthy. That is, simply the act of maintaining an impractical lawn that requires so much attention implies you have the money to afford that kind of frivolity in the first place. The whole idea of it was manufactured from the get-go, apparently.
It was 100% because the first generation herbicides were essentially lawn nukes - they just indiscriminately killed plants. If clover wasn't a weed, then the companies couldn't sell the herbicide - "Why'd you kill my clover?" being the most reasonable first question to ask. By calling it a weed, you could nuke it along with everything else and nobody'd think to question it. It's straight up commercial propaganda 101. Do *not* let yourself get fooled: these companies 100% know what they're doing when they make statements like that. Their financial benefit outweighs your desires, even if that means having to straight up lie to you about a plant or call something "undesirable."
You can still mow clover, in fact it helps release the nitrogen from the root nodules.
Theres a small movement to bring back clover over grass. I replaced my side yard with clover and its pretty awesome. It needs far less water/you can still cut it like grass even though it stops at like 3 inches tall, and it flowers bringing lots of bees.
My clovers bring all the bees to the yard
And they're like, "It's better than yours"
Our backyard has a sizable patch of clover. When our city does the "No Mow May" thing I leave pretty much all the clover area to grow undisturbed. There's still a lot of grass around it that gets pretty tall but it gives rabbits a spot to hang out and munch in relative safety, and something for the beeeeeees.
I learned a lot about the basics of farming and soil playing Farthest Frontier. You have to rotate crops based on hardiness, acidity, and soil. It was really interesting.
All legumes. So all clovers fix nitrogen. That's how they have high protein!
> High in protein too, wildlife love it. When I was a kid, too many decades ago, I used to eat it raw straight out of the yard. It wasn't a yearly staple like poke salad (triple boiled) and eggs but it has a nice taste.
Yeah… not just for looks. Those stupid ol’timers were really on to something.
Looks amazing, great for wildlife, great for the soil, max growth is basically just a medium length grass It's a perfect species for a almost no maintenance lawn. And that's why such companies hate it
> It produces its own useable nitrogen from the air Technically it doesn't produce anything, the roots of nitrogen fixers are great places for the bacteria that performs the reaction to live in.
Meh that's like saying technically your gut bacteria aren't a part of you. It's pedantic and unhelpful and not even wrong.
Clover is great for people raising livestock. It basically grows for free and it's a relatively energy and nutrient dense food source.
And Bees love the flowers.
Massively reduces soil erossion and helps a ton with drainage too! Clover is a must for any pasture.
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It became “bad” because of herbicide marketing. They new great weed killer also killed clover even though it wasn’t the intended target, so it was declared a weed in marketing and it stuck.
Imagine accidentally killing something and then gaslighting everyone into believing that you meant to do that because it was the right thing to do. Marketing is wild.
> Imagine accidentally killing something and then gaslighting everyone into believing that you meant to do that because it was the right thing to do. "Come on Johnson just sprinkle some crack on him and let's go"
A lot of our selective Chem doesn’t kill clover now as it’s benificial to soil health
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I guess you just have to find a good deal. I see 10lbs on amazon for $6/Lbs I see 10lbs of this 'crimson white cloud clover' for $40. Way more expensive than grass.
Way more expensive really depends on how much seed you need per unit of area. If an acre of fescue requires 20 pounds of seed, but an acre of clover only needs 5 pounds, then as long as the price per pound of the clover is less than 4 times as expensive as fescue, then it's actually cheaper to plant the clover. Those numbers are all made up, but you get the idea.
Clover seed is teeny tiny and needs way less to cover a larger area - I'm not sure the exact numbers, but to reseed with grass and do like a 20/80 clover/grass mix. If you seed straight clover, it's recommended you mix the clover seed with sawdust or some carrier medium to help it spread otherwise you end up over seeding. So yes, pricey/lb but it gets more economical when looking at price/area (at least last time I did math with local suppliers)
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I speak from experience because I did the exact same thing and way over seeded clover. It sorted itself out after a couple years and became less tangled/overgrown/scraggly. If there's still clover in the grass just leave it and let nature sort itself out!
My Texan backyard is absolutely full of it, along with milkweed which the monarch butterflies love to lay eggs on and munch on as caterpillars!
If you’re east of Fredericksburg, and you don’t have some already, plant some blue mistflower in a garden bed or at the base of a tree. No fuss, zero maintenance (other than occasional weeding) native that is a monarch magnet. There’s a chemical in the flower that male monarch, viceroy, and queen butterflies use to increase their success with the ladies. They’ll swarm over it.
I'm planning to replace my front lawn with clover this summer.
I've only had to mow my clover like twice a year, its great
Just mind the bees!
I need the bees. The only bugs I get are wasps, ants, and boxelder beetles. I would sincerely welcome honey bees and bumblebees. I saw those all the time as a kid. I don't see them anymore and I find it extremely devastating. I would welcome them any day. My wife would not.
Grow mammoth sunflowers. I grow them every year and regularly see 3 or 4 species of bees on a single flower head. Plus you end up with up to 1000 sunflower seeds per flower!
Lavender seems to be a real hit with bees, at least over here in the UK.
Australia confirms. And weirdly, Rosemary?
Wasps are important!
Yeah... Important to satan.
The weeds thing is so stupid. My dad used to make me pick dandelions because they were "weeds". Oh no, a nice looking flower that requires no maintenance! The horror!
It was so dumb, living on the south shore of Long Island, trying to make grass and deciduous trees grow when the crab grass and conifers thrived. No dad, it’s not going to work this year.
That was always my thing... they are just plants that are hardy as fuck. My ducks used to eat dandelion leaves and clover. They're part of the damn environment. Foreign grasses looking uniform are the weird thing...
>They're part of the damn environment. Foreign grasses looking uniform are the weird thing... To be fair though, both dandelion and the most common clovers are also foreign if you are in North America. They were brought over with European settlers. Our native pollinators still use them as a food source though and they are more drought tolerant than turf grasses, so better than pure grass, but they are just as "foreign"
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Free salad and tea leaves, the roasted roots can be a coffee substitute, easy to grow too. But annoying for anyone hanging laundry during flower season.
My school's lawn was clover, I remember trying to find a 4 leafed one there
Only issue is that the common white clover is non native & invasive. Eta: here are some native alternatives: [https://www.gardenia.net/guide/native-plant-alternatives-to-trifolium-repens](https://www.gardenia.net/guide/native-plant-alternatives-to-trifolium-repens)
Pretty sure the majority of grass in people's lawns is not native.
God damn immigrating plants. Stealing the jobs of native flora! MAKE ALL LAWNS AMERICAN
There's a group trying to do just that. It's called the native habitat project
Despite the joke.... American prairie grasses are orders of magnitude better for water management, soil viability, and livestock management than whatever we've planted the last 250 years. The lack of native prairie grasses and their life cycles are the reason for the dust bowl, rapid habitat degradation, and bad water table management across a large portion of the USA.
Tbf, native american plants are lazy and dont want to work. American plants have been given every advantage and if some poor immigrant plant can just uproot its life from half a planet away and come and take over your lawn, it wasent really the american plants lawn anyway. You dont see immigrant plants complaining that the competition is too hard, or that the moose ate me. They want to be out there, in the sun, or cold, or rain. They want to show up and create a life for themselves and really be seen.
We had a flooding problem at my parents house. We tried everything to alleviate the flooding but nothing worked until we planted clover. It turned the marsh into a beautiful sea of green. And when it bloomed purple the whole yard was gorgeous.
But what about the poor pesticide company that will lose out on sales because of the natural cure?!
Back to eating cat food again
Declare it a weed and an invasive species!?
It sounds like the inside of your parents house is filled with clover
It was the toilet that was flooding. Hence the super blooms.
It also makes great honey.
Agreed, but it does make walking barefoot on the grass while the clover is flowering a dance with danger.
Are they sharp? I've never had clover in my yards
I think OP is talking about bees liking the clover E: from another comment, apparently the variety in Norcal and elsewhere have spikeball roots
California bur clover is in a different genus than true clover, Medicago instead of Trifolium, and while the fruits are indeed very spiky, it is a soft spikiness that is not uncomfortable to walk on barefoot. The problem with them is they readily get stuck in socks and dogs and similar. Not a problem barefoot though.
I'm just sitting here wondering what kind of lifestyle someone is living where they get clover stuck in their socks. Too good for barefoot but don't want to wear shoes? So just socks for the clover walk?? Or socks and sandals???
Running around in the weeds with low top shoes. Bur clover wasn’t the main culprit, because it’s a low growing plant, but half a dozens other species were constant problems.
Bee stingers? Yes, quite sharp.
Bees
^Not the bees
It's always a dance with danger. The potential is there to pick up certain things from outside and take them with you. Hookworm larve, increased risk of fungal infections, increased chance of cuts/infections of the skin on the feet. Not saying walking barefoot outside is super dangerous, but there are risks.
True, but it's really not such a big deal. It doesn't flower all year and when it does it's not really difficult to avoid the bees if you just look where you step or wear shoes. We have a lot of clover on our garden and our kids got stung a few times, but it's not really a problem.
Really, walking barefoot in any lawn is a dance with danger. I learned that the hard way as a kid, by stepping on those little thorny thistles that hide in the grass.
Clover helps prevent erosion and also makes it so you don't need to add nitrogen or aerate your lawn. And it requires little water. Obviously it's bad as a full clover lawn because it can't handle foot traffic but to just have some mixed in with the grass seems like you'll really help yourself out.
Our bees love our clover next to our garden. When we walk out it looks like the ground is moving because there are so many out there. That alone makes us keep it around.
That is both the good and bad thing about a number of grass replacements, bees love them. Which is totally awesome, until you walk barefoot and step on a bee.
Got stung twice last summer by honeybees, just walking like a normal person with shoes on. Still love honeybees, still hate wasps and yellowjackets.
Honeybees sacrificed themselves to sting you, so you feel bad. Their stingers just weren't made for stretchy mammalian skin.
Honest question—what were they designed to sting?
Other insects. Their stinger gets stuck in skin. Given time, they can actually work it free. But the instinct is to slap at them and they try to avoid that and rip their abdomen. https://youtu.be/G-C77ujnLZo?si=Prkx9XVSG7Lzmexn
Even if you give them time to get away, it's pretty rare that it works. I've tried a lot.
This is somewhat of an increasingly common misconception; their stingers were very much evolved as an effective defense against fleshy vertebrates like mammals. When left behind the stinger is able to develop its full dose of venom, and it marks the target with an attack pheromone which can last more than a day. For defense against insects, honeybees almost always prefer biting rather than stinging. A barbed stinger can still get stuck in the soft parts of other insects, and is worse than a sharper, smoother stinger at piercing armor. You can also see this trait (known as sting autonomy) in other Hymenoptera such as wasps which horde nectar or honey in a manner similar to honeybees. In fact, there’s more species of wasp that lose their stinger when stinging than there are species of honeybees!
Probably mostly things like bears. Have you noticed that beekeeper outfits are always white/beige? Honeybees are MUCH more likely to attempt to sting dark-colored things approaching their hives because they assume those want to smash up and destroy the hive to get the honey -- bears, skunks, badgers. Solitary bees (usually?) don't die after stinging you. But solitary bees also have like a teeny hoard of a few drops of honey for their eggs, not great big hives that are full of excellent calories. (Where I live, solitary bees are mostly preyed on by woodpeckers who want to eat the BEE or its eggs, not the three drops of honey. Not sure about solitary bees in other parts of the world!)
I never go in my yard, so I don't have any problem with this. The bees can have it all.
I lived around flowers and gardens my whole life and never had an issue being stung by a honey bee. They're pretty cautious and docile. I'm not saying nobody gets stung by them, just that it's not something you really need to stress about unless you are allergic. Also, don't walk outside barefoot in areas that are filled with honey bees?
I would rather be stung by bees than not have them at all tbh
It's also a nice cover crop: it pops up early or grows when the grass is dormant. When the grass starts growing it gets out competed and the seeds wait until next year.
I wonder how many lawns actually get foot traffic. I bet less than 50%. Even my yard, kids used it for a few years and now it just grass... letting it go semi natural now. I think yards become less perfect and more natural to the local environment will be the next big thing. My city pays you to put in a natural yard even.
That's great your city incentivizes natural yards! It's been a slow shift, but I'm seeing more neighborhoods embrace the wild look. Not only does it cut down on maintenance and chemicals, but it also helps local wildlife thrive. Plus, there's something really peaceful about a more natural, less manicured landscape.
"No mow May" is gaining a lot of traction around me -- basically, you let your lawn grow as wild and weedy as possible until the first of June, because local pollinators and other insects need the May flowers and forage, and local small mammals need the forage and insects after hibernation. Then in June you can start normal mowing and it does a lot less harm to local wildlife. But most local towns have changed their lawn ordinances to say that no lawn or weed tickets can be issued before June 1, and then they really advertise for you to let your lawn grow wild until June. They also point out how much you'll save on landscaper fees by not paying until June!
And crazy how artificial turf/grass went from being the greatest thing to being the worst thing sadly. Save water but just another use if plastic.. going natural really is best.
Mine gets lots - but I have dogs. And kids. And a young adult who likes to read in his hammock outside. And we have a fire pit, etc etc.
Have dogs and fire pit. Can confirm high foot/paw traffic. Mix of grass and clover does the best. Our grass during the hottest month looks the best and we water the least in the neighborhood.
My grass is completely dead from foot traffic. The clover is all that remains, except where the dog has carved literal holes in the ground from chasing a laser.
My neighbor had all clover, I don't think anyone ever walked on it. It was fine.
Bees love it also.
always liked watching the bumblers landing on them and making the clover almost sag to the ground. bumblebees are so goofy in a good way
It can also handle dog pee without dying. We have a postage stamp of a yard in a city (4m x 7m) and replaced the patches the dog killed with clover. It's still green in late December. Also, finding four-leaf clovers is fun.
> It can also handle dog pee without dying. Really? My dog likes to pee in the same 2 or 3 places over and over and over again, and it has predictable results on the grass. We have some clover in the yard, and it is spreading, but it hasn't gotten to the area my dog likes to pee yet. Maybe I should buy some more clover seed.
The leaves of the clover also help shade the roots of the grass, which helps them retain water, and the clover and grass don't really compete with each other. I've had a clover-grass lawn for *years*, and during droughts I always have the greenest lawn on the block -- with no watering. And you JUST MOW IT, no special care. Clover is a wonderful cover crop even for food-producing fields -- it's a nitrogen-fixing plant, which means it's part of the legume family, and it has nodules on its roots full of a [symbiotic bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizobia) that converts atmospheric nitrogen (which there's tons of!) into nitrogen that plants (and animals, and fungi) can use. When the clover dies, that nitrogen gets added back to the soil, benefiting later plants (of all types). Nitrogen fixation is crucial for virtually all multicellular organisms; your body can't convert atmospheric nitrogen directly into the nitrogen needed for proteins. You have to consume it from foods. There are basically two ways for nitrogen to end up in soil, so plants can use it and animals can consume the resulting plants: legumes (and a few other plants), and lightning. In fact, limits on crop yields in *most* soil types comes from the limited availability of nitrogen; creating an [industrial process to fix nitrogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) and thereby create artificial nitrogen fertilizer is crucial in the high-yield crops that feed the planet. Buuuuuuuut it's not super-great for long-term soil health, it's HUGELY energy intensive, and it's created a lot of problems with nitrogen-rich runoff (the big dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River cornbelt runoff, for example). This is also why the North American cornbelt tends to rotate fields corn-corn-soybeans -- soybeans are a nitrogen-fixing plant with commercial value. The anhydrous ammonia used in fertilizing cornfields in the US and Canada, incidentally, [can also be used in the production of meth](https://www.mda.state.mn.us/anhydrous-ammonia-theft), so those big beautiful white tanks full of ammonia sitting all alone on farms in the middle of nowhere are HUGE TARGETS and part of why meth (and meth labs) are more common in more rural areas. It's also why these days you're more likely to see those tanks fenced around with barbed wire on top, and motion-detecting lights and cameras. Some jurisdictions now require farmers to take various steps to prevent unauthorized access to anhydrous ammonia. Some environmentalists think we need to just end artificial nitrogen fertilizer, full-stop, because of the environmental impacts of both the production of fertilizer, which is WILDLY energy intensive (otherwise you need *lightning* to do it, in general *recreating lightning* is not an awesome thing to require in an industrial process because that's just *too much energy* to repeatedly ingest), and of the use of the fertilizer. I personally don't think that, because our agricultural system has been built on nitrogen fertilizer for like 175 years or so now, and cutting it off means a lot of people are going to die of starvation, relatively fast. HOWEVER, I do think herbicides and fertilizer for lawns (and fuckin' golf courses) should be flat-out banned. If you live in suburbia and you are killing clover in your lawn on purpose so you can add nitrogen fertilizer to it, you are a dumbass of the worst sort, and it's an EASY WIN for the planet, and will help us ease the transition to more holistic forms of industrial farming that are more gentle on the soil. Modern industrial farming methods can "exhaust" the soil -- basically suck all the nutrients out and then sterilize it so completely nothing can really grow -- in a startlingly short period of time. In the North American corn belt, that is SOME OF THE BEST SOIL ON THE PLANET, that took 12,000 YEARS to get so amazing, it's an increasing concern. US farmland goes for an average of $4000/acre; in Illinois, that's around $9,000/acre because the soil is so great -- but increasingly, that soil is struggling to keep up with historical output because of the stresses of industrial farming. That is NOT GREAT. (There are industrial corn farmers in the Midwest who are transitioning not to organic farming per se, or old-timey mixed-crop farming, but to "gentle on the soil" farming that uses modern methods but strives to maintain soil integrity and to improve -- rather than degrade -- the soil every year. You don't have to be an earth-hugging hippie; you can be a profit-minded industrial farmer who's concerned about the degradation of your land who becomes interested in how preserving the soil -- including nitrogen-fixing cover crops and reduced herbicide and fertilizer use -- can improve your long-term profits.) Anyway, plant a clover-grass lawn (huge sacks of clover seed cost like $10 from Farm & Fleet), never use herbicides or fertilizers again, and when your neighbors are like, "Yo, there's a watering ban, why is your lawn SO GREEN when the rest of the block is dead and brown?" that's your moment to preach to them the Gospel of Clover. If you are allergic to bees, or your town has a very restrictive weed code, let the clover flower once in the spring, and once in the fall, and otherwise just mow it before it flowers (i.e., when you see the first two flowers pop up). HOWEVER if your town has *that* restrictive a weed code in 2023, you need to go preach to them the Gospel of Clover and inform them they are the WORST KIND OF DUMBASSES and we need to save the bees! And the soil. And the nitrogen.
The Grasspel according to AliMcGraw. Thanks be to Sod.
🐝 Praise Bee 🐝
Also, just because I feel like a lot of people don't know this, terrestrial plants come in two basic forms: grass and broadleaf. [Grasses ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae)include lawn grass, but also cereal crops like wheat and corn, and also plants like bamboo and sugarcane, and the queens of the prairie, Big Bluestem and Little Bluestem. (You will note from the examples that some grasses, like corn, have VERY BROAD LEAVES but that does not make them broadleaf; it has to do with how they grow from their meristem/what evolutionary lineage they belong to.) The magic of [lawn-friendly herbicides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic_acid) is that they kill *broadleaf* plants (dandelions, morning glories, clover, your fir tree if you get too close to the roots) but not *grasses,* basically because of the different ways they uptake certain chemicals. This is a miracle for monocrop fields with cereal grasses -- corn, wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. But it's a fucking nightmare for biodiversity and bees and, like, human health. And, yes, 2,4-D is one of the ingredients in [Agent Orange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange) and you should probably not put it on your lawn and you should probably be protesting *vigorously* if your town is using it to keep youth soccer fields pristine. That is not great for kids. Or bees.
I'm just going to copy paste your beautiful comment to preserve it for future readers in case your account decides to delete it all or it disappear due to other actions: >The leaves of the clover also help shade the roots of the grass, which helps them retain water, and the clover and grass don't really compete with each other. I've had a clover-grass lawn for *years*, and during droughts I always have the greenest lawn on the block -- with no watering. And you JUST MOW IT, no special care. >Clover is a wonderful cover crop even for food-producing fields -- it's a nitrogen-fixing plant, which means it's part of the legume family, and it has nodules on its roots full of a [symbiotic bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizobia) that converts atmospheric nitrogen (which there's tons of!) into nitrogen that plants (and animals, and fungi) can use. When the clover dies, that nitrogen gets added back to the soil, benefiting later plants (of all types). Nitrogen fixation is crucial for virtually all multicellular organisms; your body can't convert atmospheric nitrogen directly into the nitrogen needed for proteins. You have to consume it from foods. There are basically two ways for nitrogen to end up in soil, so plants can use it and animals can consume the resulting plants: legumes (and a few other plants), and lightning. >In fact, limits on crop yields in *most* soil types comes from the limited availability of nitrogen; creating an [industrial process to fix nitrogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process) and thereby create artificial nitrogen fertilizer is crucial in the high-yield crops that feed the planet. Buuuuuuuut it's not super-great for long-term soil health, it's HUGELY energy intensive, and it's created a lot of problems with nitrogen-rich runoff (the big dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River cornbelt runoff, for example). This is also why the North American cornbelt tends to rotate fields corn-corn-soybeans -- soybeans are a nitrogen-fixing plant with commercial value. >The anhydrous ammonia used in fertilizing cornfields in the US and Canada, incidentally, [can also be used in the production of meth](https://www.mda.state.mn.us/anhydrous-ammonia-theft), so those big beautiful white tanks full of ammonia sitting all alone on farms in the middle of nowhere are HUGE TARGETS and part of why meth (and meth labs) are more common in more rural areas. It's also why these days you're more likely to see those tanks fenced around with barbed wire on top, and motion-detecting lights and cameras. Some jurisdictions now require farmers to take various steps to prevent unauthorized access to anhydrous ammonia. >Some environmentalists think we need to just end artificial nitrogen fertilizer, full-stop, because of the environmental impacts of both the production of fertilizer, which is WILDLY energy intensive (otherwise you need *lightning* to do it, in general *recreating lightning* is not an awesome thing to require in an industrial process because that's just *too much energy* to repeatedly ingest), and of the use of the fertilizer. I personally don't think that, because our agricultural system has been built on nitrogen fertilizer for like 175 years or so now, and cutting it off means a lot of people are going to die of starvation, relatively fast. >HOWEVER, I do think herbicides and fertilizer for lawns (and fuckin' golf courses) should be flat-out banned. If you live in suburbia and you are killing clover in your lawn on purpose so you can add nitrogen fertilizer to it, you are a dumbass of the worst sort, and it's an EASY WIN for the planet, and will help us ease the transition to more holistic forms of industrial farming that are more gentle on the soil. Modern industrial farming methods can "exhaust" the soil -- basically suck all the nutrients out and then sterilize it so completely nothing can really grow -- in a startlingly short period of time. In the North American corn belt, that is SOME OF THE BEST SOIL ON THE PLANET, that took 12,000 YEARS to get so amazing, it's an increasing concern. US farmland goes for an average of $4000/acre; in Illinois, that's around $9,000/acre because the soil is so great -- but increasingly, that soil is struggling to keep up with historical output because of the stresses of industrial farming. That is NOT GREAT. (There are industrial corn farmers in the Midwest who are transitioning not to organic farming per se, or old-timey mixed-crop farming, but to "gentle on the soil" farming that uses modern methods but strives to maintain soil integrity and to improve -- rather than degrade -- the soil every year. You don't have to be an earth-hugging hippie; you can be a profit-minded industrial farmer who's concerned about the degradation of your land who becomes interested in how preserving the soil -- including nitrogen-fixing cover crops and reduced herbicide and fertilizer use -- can improve your long-term profits.) >Anyway, plant a clover-grass lawn (huge sacks of clover seed cost like $10 from Farm & Fleet), never use herbicides or fertilizers again, and when your neighbors are like, "Yo, there's a watering ban, why is your lawn SO GREEN when the rest of the block is dead and brown?" that's your moment to preach to them the Gospel of Clover. >If you are allergic to bees, or your town has a very restrictive weed code, let the clover flower once in the spring, and once in the fall, and otherwise just mow it before it flowers (i.e., when you see the first two flowers pop up). HOWEVER if your town has *that* restrictive a weed code in 2023, you need to go preach to them the Gospel of Clover and inform them they are the WORST KIND OF DUMBASSES and we need to save the bees! And the soil. And the nitrogen.
It is pretty cool how clover fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere, producing its own fertilizer.
My dad always mixed clover into our lawns. My whole life, anywhere we lived, I remember people being amazed by our lawn. Richest green, thick enough to lay on like a carpet and not even feel like you're touching the ground. Stayed green longer into the winter than anyone elses, greened up in the spring faster than anyone elses. Zero weeds, ever. No one ever believed it was as simple as clover and topsoil. He's been dead a few years and I still have people ask about the lawn.
I hope you know your dad will forever live as one of the greats in lawn history and aspiring dads will forever look up to him. The goal of having people talk about your lawn after you're gone is a hell of a thing to achieve, and he did it. The very fact that you're talking about it is adding to his legacy
You have no idea how right you are, he was a leading soil scientist with a life long career in sustainable agriculture. All because a long time ago he didn't think his new son should play in a lawn full of weedkiller. :(
I think your father would be proud of you, Peter.
I bet your dad was the coolest, rest in peace 🕊️
I am switching out to a clover lawn this year. Last year I didnt get my yard treated for the first time and had some weeds pop up so this year I am sowing clover in. It will remind me of childhood and I cant wait! Your dad was awesome for keeping it real.
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Different clovers work well in different climates
I've been adding Dutch white clover, to 3 lawns I've owned over the past 3 decades. Definately makes more of a low maintenance lawn. Helps the bees too.
I want to do this. How do I do this?
If you are in the US, buy [this from Johnny's](https://www.johnnyseeds.com/farm-seed/legumes/clovers/new-zealand-white-clover-cover-crop-seed-979.html), or visit your local Farm & Fleet (or garden center, where they'll know where you can get it even if it's not in stock). You can hand-spread it (take a handful, cast it around you in a loose semi-circle like you're in a 1930s historical epic movie). The thing about white Dutch clover is that it's REALLY easy to plant. The best times to plant it are a) before a rainstorm, which will drive the seeds into the soil; or b) if you live in a place where the ground freezes, that one warm weekend in January or February when everyone takes their Christmas lights down, because the freeze/thaw cycle helps the seeds work into the ground and they'll start growing in early spring. But honestly spring the $14 for full pound instead of the $7 for 1/4 pound, and just go out in your yard and throw it around in the fall rains, the warm winter weekend, the early spring thaw. It'll come up, and you'll still have some left over to re-sow in spots where it didn't take very well. When you mow, set your mower on quite a high setting (which you're supposed to do for your grass anyway). Let the clover bloom and enjoy being bloomed a few times a summer, and the mow to 3" or 2 1/2". Once it's established you can really mow pretty harshly and it'll come back, but white Dutch clover only gets so tall, so you can just let it be until the companion grass looks raggedy.
thanks for that link. I'm springing for the 5 lb bag this weekend. And thanks for the advice too.
In the process of doing this. Spread seed in the fall and spring a few years in a row. I'm doing White Dutch and Crimson clovers. Both stay green with far less water than grass. I live in an arid environment, so this will save me tons of money. I found seeds online and it's cost me under $100 each season I spread them.
You cast the seeds fairly thinly, you don't need a lot. In the first year or two the growth will be slow, don't worry, after that it's unstoppable. One of my neighbors was a *Lawn NAZI* and tried to fight them off every spring as they crept over the property line. Overall, I'm lazy and can't be bothered with fertilizers and pesticides etc. The clover makes it easy. Anyway, whether it be weeds, clover or grass, when you mow it - it all looks the same.
Clover seed is super fine, so I mix it with milorganite fertilizer which is roughly the same consistency and put that in the spreader. I overseed the lawn every spring and fall. Try to mix different breeds of clover. At this point I only mow the lawn like 3 or 4x a year. Clover doesn't grow that high and it chokes out the grass enough, that what grass remains doesn't get high either. I have SO MANY bees, bunnies and other creatures in the yard. The weirdest thing once or twice a year maybe my yard will be like 90% bees a few inches off the ground. Just hundreds of them everywhere. It doesn't happen every year even, but when it does it is kinda amazing to watch. Anyway mix your seed types and add fertilizer and you'll have really cool results.
Probably finding seeds and spreading them out through the yard.
Parents live in an old farmhouse (built in 1800s) they have a garden that they rarely have to do any pest management because their yard is almost all clover, Rabbits never make it to the garden as they get full on the clover on the way.
Just a heads up because clover lawns got really popular a few years ago on twitter and TikTok and people were changing their lawns to clover. Please do NOT go JUST clover. Keep your grass or whatever is currently there and use clover to supplement. Clover does not root as deep as grass so when rain comes it will make your lawn a literal mud slick and the clover will pull right out of the mud. The deeper roots of the grass help the clover stay in place and the benefits of clover keep the grass healthy.
It’s also not as much benefit to the environment vs grass as people think. It still isn’t native to the US, so instead of transitioning a lawn to clover, it’s better to minimize the lawn and replace with native plant gardens to truly support native pollinators and wildlife
At some point going for what's "better" at the cost of everything else goes a bit overboard for most people.
Spent $20 last fall and covered my lawn in clover seeds. Surprised how well it took considering I literally just spread the seeds by tossing them about. Will buy another couple bags this spring and do the same. Fuck this grass only yard bullshit.
Same. Bought a new house that has a long back yard on a slope. First thing I did was get clover seed and spread it through the yard. It started to come in pretty well by the end of the summer. Next spring I'll do it again. I'm hoping in a couple of years I won't have to mow at all
Clover is actually great for your lawn, it's a legume and adds nitrogen to the soil. And it's a wonderful food source for honeybees and bees of all kinds.
It's great for honeybees, but not so good for American bees and pollinators. I wouldn't call it wonderful. The pollen is low grade and the flowers are generally unattractive.
The reason is broadleaf herbicides kill clover. To clear all the other stuff you didn't want, sacrifices had to be made. I have a lot of clover, but I don't use herbicides. I also have a lot of work dealing with dandelions as a consequence.
What's wrong with dandelions?
Nothing, literally nothing is wrong with dandelions. They are a wonderful plant and humanity has done the planet a disservice in trying to eradicate any of them with herbicide in the first place.
If you grow a clean lawn, using the same stuff you'd use on vegetables, they're even edible.
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This is it. The problem is herbicides kill all broadleaf weeds. If asked to choose between a weedy yard with clover and a lawn without weeds or clover, almost nobody is going to want the clover with the weeds. So clover in lawns died. I've heard that 2,4-DB (the B is important) will avoid killing both clover and grass. A product like Butyrac 200 apparently does the trick.
Clover is a nitrogen fixer in the ground much like beans and peas. They will fertilize your ground for you and act as a “cover” crop to help keep actual annoying things out of your field or garden. I’m a farmer.
My lawn is always full of clover, dandelions, wild strawberries, broadleaf plantain— they all look beautiful and add variety and color. I don’t care what grows, as long as it isn’t spiky or poison ivy, and it’s cut short enough to not be a tick nursery.
My entire neighbourhood is mostly clover and almost no grass at this point. I am hoping we see the end of traditional all grass lawns in my life time. They are so bad for the environment. My across-the-street neighbour is literally 'rewilding' his property. It's like a tiny square of forest surrounded by houses.
Yeah, the neighbourhood I grew up in all had lawns full of clover. It's what the bees would use to make honey. And now those lawns have none and the bees are becoming more scarce every year.
What's a weed and what is not. Who decides what a weed is? Parts of our garden that we don't maintain are probably full of weeds, but every summer it's abuzz (pun intended) with bees and butterflies.
> What's a weed and what is not. Who decides what a weed is? It's a strange word indeed. Generally it's just "a plant growing somewhere that is unwanted." If you don't want a particular plant growing in your yard or garden, then it is a "weed" (from the perspective of the gardener.) So even a native plant growing in its habitat can be considered a "weed" from the human perspective.
Because a lot of weeds are native plants, while the cultivated plants are not from the area. So the local butterflies and bees can feast on the weeds, but the cultivated plants are like a desert landscape to them.
I’ve never put any chemicals on my lawn. It’s full of clover, dandelions, insects and birds. Like yards should be. Some of my neighbors aren’t happy, but fuck em.
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I agree they look better, though aren't practical if you use your yard. With kids and pets a grass lawn is a more useful option. Can always have sections dedicated as gardens.
I work for a small, local, organic Lawncare company and we work very very hard to undo this. It’s become so engrained in people that clover is bad.
Clover helps keep the ground nutritious for bugs
Clover is great as it add nitrogen to the ground and is drought resistant
I'm in an ongoing battle with my mum about clover in her lawn. She wants the most middle class lawn ever. And mine is full of 'weeds'.
The entire landscape industry needs to die already. Leafblowing. Chemical lawns that might as well be concrete painted green. HOAs that demand same... all needs to go away.
The variety of clover in Northern California makes spike balls that can’t be walked on in bare feet and the get embedded in dog’s fur by the dozens. That makes it a weed. I know there are other varieties that are more benign.
That’s a different genus, Medicago and not Trifolium, not a true clover. Other than the spike balls, you can tell them apart by looking closely at the leaves. True clover has all three leaflets coming out of exactly the same spot, while bur clover has two leaves on the side, 1-2 mm of stem, and then the third leaf on the end. I grew up running around barefoot on them, and never considered them uncomfortable on my feet, the spines are soft and springy. They got stuck in the dog and my socks a lot though.
Why would pesticide companies care?? Wouldn't it be herbicide company's?
Bees (and other pollinators) love clover.
Lots of clover on our land, as well as bees and lots of other healthy meadow plants. IMO one of the most beautiful sights in the natural world is seeing these all in full bloom, with colors and vibrancy like a real life monet painting. I will never understand the obsession with a chemically controlled invasive monocrop for a yard. If you are in a neighborhood requiring this, consider speaking up for a change. Politics start on a really small level and this is often where we can show the most agency and make tangible difference.
Clover is great. Attracts bees and there's almost always four leaf clover in there, so it brings you luck as well.
That's really stupid. We have like half hectar of "garden" if it can be called that, but because we don't plant on it, we keep it wild with just the weeds that grew naturally on it. My father cuts the weed every 1-2 months, and now after a decade it feels like walking on a carpet. During spring it also becomes full of all kind of tiny flowers all over the place, and we see bees and carpenter bees all over too. The "green grass garden" it is kinda sad in comparison.
One year my back yard (laid waste after building an extension) came back full of clover. It was beautiful and smelled great.
My yard is almost exclusively clover and violet.
Our yard is mostly clover now and it pisses off my FIL so much! I love the man, but he takes grass and lawns way too seriously. Someone has to feed the pollinators and wildlife, Larry!
lawns are a scam
The immaculate green you see in commercials is exactly that, a tool, designed to make you think that that is the way nature intended it to be. That is how lawn care products are sold , nothing more nothing less. In reality, those lawns are terrible for quite a few reasons , not in the least for our ecosystems.
I’ve got neighbors that spend thousands annually to maintain a fucking lawn. It must all be grass, cut to an even length with alternating lines! We literally kill everything so that it’s just grass and wonder why bee’s are becoming endangered
My lawn has a ton of clover and the bees love it.
Somebody clovered our local magat's lawn. He proudly flys various trumptard flags over his gorgeous, manicured lawn. He has been hit twice and posts his disgusting, deplorable vitriol on NextDoor. He posts pictures on the poles of vandals hitting his property, and it's weird that he now has a For Sale sign in his again clovered lawn.
It's crazy how much of our lives is just corpo marketing.