This is my first post for my new Blog about our farm. I hope to post regularly about the goings on here so that I can have a record of the interesting experiences we have while gardening and living in our wonderful little corner of the World.
So...my first post is about Clover, white Clover specifically. Many people think of White Clover as a weed...well, not here at 
Boobook Farm, we love it and it is the ground cover of choice here. It is AMAZING stuff,! Where lawn will go patchy and take tons of water to thrive, clover is drought tolerant and stays GREEN and with our 8 dogs it means no yellow patches where they go to the toilet to. I mow ours in order to thicken it up into a very dense matting but if you prefer not to you can let it go. It does flower so expect bees if you choose not to mow.
I personally like to leave some flowers as having bees around is so beneficial to our garden but not too many as I know that my Brother's dog eats bees so there's no telling what our dogs will do with a whole lot of them around.
Something else clover does is make you plants grow like CRAZY!! It is a green fertiliser fixing Nitrogen in the soil so you should see my climbing roses go when they have clover planted around them...INCREDIBLE!! I pop some of it on our hanging pots to give them a boost to.
I have mixed our white clover with Tall Fescue which seems to work great but we also have lawns that are ALL white clover an the affect is brilliant on both.
Here is a photo of our smallish clover lawn that lives next to our first veggie garden...
We do have some more clover to grow and I have just ordered another 1 acre's worth of seed so I am looking forward to planting and even more to germination. Why don't you try a Clover Lawn if you are tired of trying to keep up with a regular lawn? You might enjoy it as much as I have. These are some things I have found to make it successful:
- When first beginning, keep it wet!
- Never mow it during the heat of the day, always toward the cool of very late afternoon to early evening.
- Leave the mowing cuttings on the lawn but spread them out gently with a leaf rake if it has been very hot otherwise ou will get dry bunches on your clover.
- A Hand Mower is best, an electric mower is next best though. Remember, you are trying to help the environment with a clover lawn so choose the right mower. I have also found that in a small area, an electric whipper snipper is AWESOME for whipping it down.
- When you walk on your clover lawn, walk on it, don't drag your feet over it. I have found it to be very tough but you can dig it out if you really go over it roughly...that said, our little Terrier, Willy kicks it up all the time and the next morning it's standing up and looking great again. So be mindful of it but don't treat it too delicately.
- Enjoy it, clover is AWESOME, it is soft, chokes out weeds, looks beautiful and is drought tolerant, what could be better!
I have made a little button up that you can pop in your website or blog to let everybody know how much you love your clover lawn, here 'tis:
Please save it to your hard disk so you can upload it to your host or your blog etc.
Enjoy your day!
Kaz
We have been blessed with our very first conjoined fruit here at Boobook Farm!
