Loading...
Clover Lawn

Why Plant a Clover Lawn?

Clover lawns give too many reasons to plant within your property. These include saving water, time, effort and money on your landscaping venture. Clovers reduce disease risk and weeds; these are drought tolerant and increase erosion control. The article discusses the reasons why you should plant a clover lawn. 

Lawn care is all in the details, and we take care of every single one to give you the lawn of your dreams. Contact us today!

You have the option to go with a complete clover lawn or can even mix it with other types of grasses, and it is completely your choice. However, you will get too many benefits from having a clover lawn, which gives reasons to go for a clover lawn. Let us begin: 

Clover lawns Reduce Disease Risk

Lawns are pitted with several diseases, which can be awful. However, clovers are known to reduce the disease risk. These are quick to collect trace minerals. When it decomposes, you can find minerals available for soil life and lawn grass. This makes the grass more disease resistant, all thanks to the health benefits of clover. 

Thus planting a clover lawn will reduce the requirements for herbicides, chemicals and fertilizers in your yard. You do not need these preventive measurements, which help save money for grass maintenance. Lastly, it makes it more environmentally friendly than other grass-based lawns. 

Clovers Fertilize Your Lawn

If you do not wish to spend huge money on nitrogen for your lawn, then planting a clover lawn can help you save money. Clovers help greatly in adding benefits to turfgrass as these can help fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizer usage. 

Also, you can reap a few ecological benefits from avoiding synthetic fertilizer use. Clovers are legumes and often consume nitrogen directly from the air and add it into the soil as a fertilizer. This further helps in improving the soil quality on its own without adding any fertilizer. 

Clovers reduce weeds 

Clovers are popular in reducing weeds. It is a dense ground cover plant with broad leaves, which easily club with other broadleaf plants, including violets and dandelions. It tends to form clumps quickly and spread the secondary stolons or roots. 

Clovers are good for covering crops and forming living mulch in the lawn as they grow thick. It helps reduce other issues like erosion and soil splash and keeps the weeds at bay. Sowing it perfectly like a significant planting helps keep the weeds down for the coming months. Lastly, these are super spreaders and reduce the use of herbicides. 

Clovers are beneficial with grass 

Clovers love grasses, and they grow well as companions. We see many lawns with the composition of the two. They peacefully coexist side by side without disturbing one another. In the early days, it was a standard norm for homeowners to have lawns with a blend of clovers and other grasses. 

Even the grasses tend to return a few favors to clovers, thus making the lawn green and beautiful. The white clover can easily withstand foot traffic; however, adding it with grass can make it strong and resilient against the rough patch of people or animals on the lawns.

Clovers are Drought Free 

As you plant clovers, you have to water them daily; however, once they become stable, even supplying a minimal amount of water would suffice. The clover roots enter deep into the soil to extract the required quantity of water. 

This saves money and time, while clovers can remain green and long during the drought as they resist such conditions. Thus you can enjoy good music on any summer night as you can still feel the greenery with clovers around your lawns. 

Clovers attract pollinators

The next reason to plant clovers is that they are pollinator friendly. The clover flowers attract pollinators, including honey bees. As we see pollinators are losing their habitats, growing a clover lawn can prove a safer haven for them. 

Attracting honey around your yard helps in honey production and proves good for the environment. However, you need to be careful to avoid issues like bee wasps and stings. If you are keen on adding a bonus, several pollinators can prove like natural pest control. It further helps in saving the hassle and money for it. 

Clover lawns save money and time 

There are several ways in which clover lawns save money and time. Clover lawns require minimal maintenance, very less fertilization, less pest control, less water and minimal weeding. Also, the clover-based lawns require less mowing and less aeration. The clover lanes require much less trimming during the growing season, unlike any grass lawn’s weekly mows. 

You can call clover roots to be a living mulch and thus prevents the soil from compacting. It has deep decomposing roots and even attracts earthworms that keep the soil loose. Lastly, the clover seeds are more inexpensive than any other grass seeds, which are around $1 per 1000 square feet. 

Clovers good at soil Erosion Control

As we know, clover roots enter deep in the ground, which can help keep all the clovers, nutrients and soil in the proper place through weather challenges. Clover roots prevent soil compaction due to their excellent natural aeration capacity. As clover lawns help in increasing aeration, they also reduce erosion by gripping the soil. 

What are the steps to Plant a Clover Lawn?

The following are some of the important steps to plant a clover lawn: 

  • Preparation – It starts with preparing your lawn with lower mowing. You have to set your mower at the lower setting to get shorter grass than the normal cut. However, ensure it is too short to help the clover seeds reach the soil. If required, you need to remove the built-up thatch and aerate the lawn when you have compacted soil. Experts recommend sowing clover during the early days of the season (late March and April). 
  • Spread the seeds – You should spread the seed in the entire lawn area. You can see clover plants thriving in the full sun areas. To get optimal results, you need to overseed your lawns. 
  • Daily watering – You need to water the clover seed on a daily basis, especially during the early days of its establishment, which is around 7 to 10 days. This is often the schedule of your lawn care as per the rainfall you get in your area. 
  • The first cut – You have to wait till you see the clover seed dropping, which should follow by cutting it for around two inches. 
  • Maintain – Once you have your first cut, the clover is established. You need to cut these through the growing season for many more appearances and per the water requirements. Check more on lawn care services. 

What Kind of Clover Should I Plant?

Homeowners’ popular choices include Dutch clovers and micro clovers, which fall in the white clover family. These two popular choices differ in their heights. The dutch clover is slightly taller than the latter. It has smaller leaves and is more compact. Besides the size, we can find Dutch white and micro clover having similar features and growing requirements. 

What is the life of a clover lawn? 

The clover lawns are very different from the usual turfgrass-based lawns. The clover-based lawns can last from one to three years. You should know when to reseed. Start the reseeding from the bare or brown sports first. However, if you find more than 50% of your lawn affected, you can start the reseeding for the entire lawn.  Explore more on How to Overseed a Lawn?

Experts recommend seeding well as not all the clover seed sprout quickly. For instance, you can spread the clover at a rate of 0.25 – 1.0 pounds of seed per 1,000 square feet. In conclusion, you can seek the help of your local lawn care professionals; you can contact Eden for help. 

Lawn care is all in the details, and we take care of every single one to give you the lawn of your dreams. Contact us today!