Grass Lawn to Microclover Lawn Project

[@shemmo]

mixed grass+clover lawn is growing on me, it requires less chemicals than monocultural grass lawn, it is more resistant to the foot traffic and looks green during hot summer days. Clover is also very good to touch.

[@andrewlippincott]

Topdress your lawn with 1/4 of compost from the city super cheap that way and the lawn will love it! Just make sure you use a leveling rake to push it down to the roots.... No need for sand

[@Mscoffeegrind]

Looks great. Can't wait for an 2024 update.

[@LuminairPrime]

Great summary!

[@ColbyRidesBikes]

My back yard has been slowly getting taken over by cover, and I've let it do it's thing with the intension of letting it become a fescue/clover lawn. It's working! There are a few spots that need to be over seeded, but otherwise it's looking great. My front lawn is still 100% fescue and is more shaded, so I think I'll leave it like that.

[@LyndaJay]

Thank you for the update 🌿

[@threeriversforge1997]

Looks good. I'm thinking about doing something similar here just to help eventually get the grass dead and replaced, or at least no have it look so patchy. You can fix your bare spots by overlaying with regular potting soil and clover seed. Generally, it takes something to kick start the growth once the ground has been exposed to the sun which kills off the microbes and hardens the top layer of soil. If you put a light mulch, like straw or peat moss, just dusting it over the bare spots, that'll shade the soil and allow microbial life to flourish - shaded from the UV radiation. The wildflower patch along the woodline.... don't till. Any time you disturb the soil, you wake up weed seeds that were just waiting for sunlight to get to them. Mulch works by reducing the sunlight that hits the soil, hence why you see weeds growing on top of it where a seed blew in rather than coming up through it. Research the native plants for your "ecoregion" and buy a few plugs that you can plant. A good ground cover for low-traffic areas include Chrysogonum virginianum and Pachysandra procumbens - the native American Pachysandra. The latter would be really good to replace the ivy you have growing in that bed since it's an invasive non-native plant that hurts more than helps. The Green-and-Gold isn't nearly as aggressive a spreader, but it is a bit prettier, imo. Echinacea and Coreopsis are very good for native wildlife, but don't forget the milkweeds like Asclepias tuberosa if you want something that'll just plain stop your heart when it blooms. The monarch butterflies will thank you.

[@scottjones1905]

Thanks, great info. Agree for the bare spots - those areas are basically red clay so I'll need to amend somehow and then sow clover again. Good to know to not till for the wildflower. Are you suggesting I plant individal plugs versus a region specific seed mix for wildflowers? I am looking to potentially replace some of the lawn areas with other ground covers or native plant beds, thanks for the suggestions. For better or worse the ivy stays - it's battle tough and I am able to keep it out of the yard and I keep it off the foundation as well. It's the ultimate lazy man's ground-cover.

[@threeriversforge1997]

@@scottjones1905 The bare spots are clay.... but even clay is soft if it's kept out of the sun. The sun shining down on it basically turns surface hard as terra cotta (clay) relative to the tiny roots of the grass and clover. Think about how itsy-bitsy those roots are. To them, getting through that baked clay is just impossible. If it's a low spot, give it a light dusting of potting soil and then cover it all with a bit of straw or peat moss or even rake up some of the thatch from the surrounding area.... that'll provide cover for the soil, trapping moisture that softens up the clay and allows the roots to penetrate it. Put down a bit of seed, cover, water in.... given enough time, the patch will fill with green stuff if you keep the clay soft long enough for roots to get established. Here's a good video that demonstrates what mulch does to hard clay ground in the desert of Arizona - kzbin.info/www/bejne/pXzCc6ivrr-ojcU&pp=ygUfZWRnZSBvZiBub3doZXJlIGZhcm0gd29vZCBjaGlwcw%3D%3D You're just working on a much smaller scale. Much smaller. The principle still applies. Places like Prairie Nursery and Prairie Moon Nursery, both online, sell bonafide native plants by the seed, plug, or potted, so you know what you're getting. The generic seed packs you see at the stores are an unknown and can contain a lot of dead seeds, weeds, and whatever else. Those nurseries have great websites that allow you to see what the plants look like, how they might fit your needs, and what wildlife they are good for. Buying by the plug or bare root allows you to place an established plant exactly where you'd like it to be (in front of your kitchen window) rather than just spreading seeds and hoping something comes of it. Once you have an idea what plants you might like, you can look around your local stores to see if they carry the plants. Lowe's, for example, carries Panicum virgatum 'Shenandoah', a decorative variety of Switch Grass which once dominated the prairies and grasslands of America. Lots of birds and insects rely on Panicum for food and shelter so you can imagine what's happened to them as folks cut all the Panicum down to make way for subdivisions full of turf grass lawns. Lots of videos on KZbin about how to create gorgeous landscapes with native plants. Roy Diblik is like the Bob Ross of landscape design and his videos are just fun to watch if nothing else. kzbin.info/www/bejne/pHSpqWOphK-IbZI He doesn't use native plants exclusively, but it's still good learning. Watch a few webinars from Dr. Doug Tallamy while you're at it. kzbin.info/www/bejne/g6iYdmaoZs6WsLs

[@mylamberfeeties875]

​@@threeriversforge1997 between the 2 of you I got so much information 😮. My mind is reeling! I don't even have clover. I have a moon shaped lawn ( more like a strip of grass) 😂 however my options just widened. I am native American born along the Coquille River. I started a "garden" type yard paradise. I don't know what to call it. I don't know if there's a word for it. But I have transplanted and planted native plants gathering together the ones my people use most often for medical purposes. I plant veggies to but I try to plant ones that can grow wild, like onions, garlic, carrots so forth. I plant edible flowers like bachelor's buttons Johnny jumpers marigolds and so forth. Clover is next on my list. The land around where I live has been stomped down to dirt from cattle herds for decades. I'm building a quarter acre of my native paradise all the things I remember growing wild when I was a child running thru the forest and long the river. Some stuff though gets a hard pass 😅 like poison ivy and gorse. My love of blackberries, blueberries and huckleberries started it all. Thank you for sharing your knowledge

[@threeriversforge1997]

@@mylamberfeeties875 Glad you found value in what I wrote. Returning a small strip of land to what it used to be.... well, you can't ask for a better way to spend some time! It's fun to learn how Little Bluestem is a vital host plant for some endangered insects, but also fantastic at breaking up compacted soil and feeding wildlife. We still don't know what it does with those super-long roots, but we can assume that they're important to the bigger picture even if we don't understand how. On beaten down ground, I like to plant Echinacea purpurea because it has a huge tap root that really opens the ground. Go through their at the beginning of spring and break the stalks off just underground so the plant dies, and that leaves the tap root to rot in place, creating a channel for water and air to penetrate deep down into the soil strata. And while the coneflowers are breaking up the ground, they're also feeding the birds, bees, and everything else. With as much seed as they put out, other Echinacea will grow to replace them and the cycle continues.

[@mylamberfeeties875]

@@threeriversforge1997 the coneflower was the very first thing I planted 😁 I harvested the seeds the first year and replanted them in different areas of my yard. We make tintures from them. I grow many varieties of sunflowers every year to attract the mule deer and antelope, birds, rabbits and bees and such. They spread the sunflowers for me 😁 I have many herbs and other varieties of edible things as well. 🌻💕

[@simonederobert1612]

Thank you and Monkey for the two videos of yours which I have seen thus far. I am also living in NC. Greenville, to be exact, so your video is the first to actually be able to help me know what kind of growth conditions are under discussion. I have a couple of questions: 1) Is it your understanding that in order to really properly go for a microclover lawn that the ground needs to be covered (say, with plastic or cardboard) in an effort to kill all the grass and hopefully also the plants we call weeds and then microclover planted? 2) How long does it take for such a plastic/cardboard covering to do the job of killing grass/weeds?

[@scottjones1905]

I believe that a clover/grass blend is best for most people, especially if you already have grass in place. I wouldn't kill the grass. I'd just overseed the grass with clover. I've never killed grass with cardboard so I can't speak to that. Good luck!

[@simonederobert1612]

@@scottjones1905 I have already tried to overseed my yard with microclover without first ridding all or even part of the grass. No go with the microclover, obviously a waste of money. It grew only where there had been some grass dieback from digging out for other reasons. I have a lot of cardboard, so that is what is next on my list of efforts to have a mower-free (or at least mower-rare) yard. I am 77. I am NOT mowing weekly.

[@jdt8826]

Looking good. Before you planted your clover seeds? Did you start with plain dirt or did you have a lawn?

[@scottjones1905]

Started with a grass lawn. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rpPIf3mfbKylhLs

[@ethanstobaugh3096]

Looks great, how does it look in winter?

[@scottjones1905]

No photos or videos but it goes dormant just like the grass. 2-year (and final) update video coming soon (Spoiler. About the same as 1.5 years)

[@privateprivate8366]

I am probably about to inherit my mother’s home. It has a grass lawn, with an incline in front and a backyard covered in grass. This home is in the northeast, where we have seasonal weather, including winter with snow. Sometimes, a few feet of it. I am also getting older and have a knee injury. Do you think this might be good, to replace the grass here? Because, as it is, it may be enough work to care for the overgrown arbor vitae trees, which line the driveway, all the way to the garage.

[@scottjones1905]

I'm not the guy to advise on the Northeast (I'm in NC). But my "grass and clover" lawn is less work than "grass only" but it still requires regular mowing. If you want to reduce yard work, I'd consult with a local expert (maybe a state or county agriculture extension office) and ask them for some native plants and grasses that could replace the non-native lawn grass. Good luck.

[@TheTeeDay]

Have you ever thought of taking a Rototiller and completely tearing up your lawn and conditioning your soil then planting just clover

[@scottjones1905]

Heck no. If I was starting a lawn from scratch, maybe. I believe there is some benefit of having a grass/clover blend. Clover shades grass a bit from summer heat, fixes nitrogen in the soil, grass is a bit more durable for traffic etc.

[@kelllefae3026]

I have a patch of land overgrown with tall wild grass...can i over seed it?.... would clover squeeze it out eventually or do i need to pull it up and just seed new clover lawn?

[@scottjones1905]

I overseeded clover on a traditional grass lawn and the clover has not "taken over" so I don't think that is the answer for you. Unless you want a lawn or near-lawn look you might consider cutting it back and overseeding with native wildflower mix or native grasses.