The Enriching Properties of Clover in Your Lawn

Do you consider clover a nuisance weed?  The Heirloom Orchardist didn’t.  Although the nitrogen-fixing property of legumes (clover is a legume) was not understood by early orchardists, the benefit it brought to soil fertility was well known:

“The ordinary rotation in most parts of the Union is corn, oats, rye or wheat with clover.  In order to secure the enriching properties of clover, even in this rotation, it is said to be profitable to sow the clover with a view of turning it under for rye, or wheat, in the fall.  The expense of seed is but trifling when compared with the benefits resulting from the pasture thus afforded.”  The Yankee Farmer, July 6, 1835.

Of course, many of us don’t grow fields of corn, oats, rye or wheat.  So how can we take advantage of clover’s enriching properties?  Well, it’s easy: we can allow it to grow amongst the grasses in our lawn.  But first, we need to change our perception of clover, back to the way we perceived it several decades ago; as a valuable component to any healthy lawn.  Back to before the successful marketing efforts of the Scotts Company turned clover into a noxious weed.

Yup, that's right.  The primary reason that clover is generally considered a lawn weed today is simply because we were told it was a lawn weed…by the Scotts Company.

Would you like some supportive documentation?  Here’s a passage from my 1875 edition of Gardening for Pleasure:

“When the lawn is too extensive to be sodded, the following mixture of grass seed may be used, which we have found to make an excellent lawn:
     8 quarts Rhode Island Bent Grass
     3 quarts Creeping Bent Grass
     10 quarts Red Top Grass
     10 quarts Kentucky Blue Grass
     1 quart White Clover"

Or, you may consider this statement from a 1906 USDA Farmers’ Bulletin (No. 248), appropriately entitled “The Lawn”:

“Upon soils of a lighter character…, in localities where precipitation is greater, such grasses as redtop,  Rhode Island bent-grass, and white clover are more to be relied upon for lawn making than bluegrass.”

So what does Scotts have to do with changing clover from a desirable component of turfgrass, into a weed?

In the 1950’s, having known that the weed killer known as 2,4-D (2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) was affective against broadleaf “weeds” (such as dandelions) but not against grasses, Scotts accurately predicted the stuff could be a very profitable product to sell to suburban lawn enthusiasts.  The trouble was that it killed clover too.  So rather than going back to the laboratory, they went to their marketing department.  They changed public opinion.  Presto.  Clover is a weed.

But I'm not beating up on Scotts here.  They've got a good product.  I use their "Super Turf Builder with Plus 2 Weed Control" product on my own lawn.  I just don't broadcast it everywhere, the way they prescribe on the back of the package.  I walk about my lawn, judiciously sprinkling the stuff by hand on the target areas, mostly where dandelions may have taken hold.  It's an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach.  This Heirloom Orchardist doesn't have many weeds in his lawn.  But I've got lots of enriching white clover.

When seeding your lawn, either with or without clover, consider a hand-held seeder spreader from MasterGardening.com.