Have you ever thought about covering your lawn with clovers? It’d look so astonishing when you use a combination of lawn grass and Clover to cover the ground, and a month later, your lawn is filled with small white clover flowers.
If you already own a lawn, then how to plant Clover in existing lawn must be your concern. Planting clovers in an existing yard is much easier than planting a new clover lawn.
Though it’s an easy process, you still have to maintain a step-by-step process to plant Clover in your existing lawn successfully. Read along to learn more about the planting process, when to plant, and some maintenance tips for clover lawn.
Things You Need To Know Before You Start
Clovers grow best in sandy or clay soils. They prefer to do better in soil between 6 to 7 pH levels; therefore, you should have a soil test kit. In case your existing lawn’s soil is out of the ideal range, you can adjust the pH level by adding some extra ingredients:
- Add Lime to make the soil alkaline
- Add Peat Moss to make the soil acidic
According to lawn specialists, if grass and Clover grow from seed, it can build a healthy lawn. However, make sure you don’t spread different clover seeds together.
Clover seeds are dense and so small, and seeds clump together under the seed bag. So when you spread different types of clover seeds with grass seeds, it may result in uneven coverage. That’s why you should determine your preferable Clover to grass ratio and spread seeds individually.
How To Plant Clover In The Existing Lawn?
It’s not like you can’t plant clovers only to cover your ground, but clovers bloom better when you combine them with lawn grass. Here’s a complete step-by-step guide on plant Clover in the existing lawn:
● What Kind Of Clover Should You Plant
Selecting the right clover seed is the first of planting clovers in your existing lawn. There are many types of clovers used to cover lawns, but the most widely used clovers are dutch white Clover and micro-clover.
Here’s a comparison between these two clover seeds to help in the right one for your lawn:
| Dutch White Clover | Micro-Clover |
| Need reseeding between 2-3 years | Need reseeding after four weeks of frost date |
| Remains green all the time, depending on the area you live in | Turns brown in winter due to the clovers dormancy interval |
| Thrives better with 4 to 6 hours of sunlight | Has an excellent shade tolerant and blooms better in sunny areas |
| Tolerates mowing closely compared to micro-clover | Can tolerate more foot traffic than white Clover |
| Blooms when mature and can be used for bees as food | Blooms 90% fewer flowers than white Clover |
| Can be mowed high about 5 to 9 cm | Can be mowed shorter than white Clover |
Still, confused about which one to choose? Well, let’s make things more precise. Both dutch white Clover and micro Clover are low-maintenance clovers, and the primary difference between these two seeds is their height.
Micro-clover has smaller leaves, is compact, and grows low to the ground compared to white Clover. On the other hand, both of these seeds share similar growing requirements and thrive better under sunlight with great shade tolerance.
● Learn Clovers Requirements
Clovers also need sunlight, moisture, and an ideal pH level of 6 to 7 like other lawn plants. Make sure you check the pH level of your existing lawn before planting to ensure adequate phosphorus and potassium.
Your clovers also require clay or sandy loam soil to grow properly. Therefore, early summer or spring becomes the best time for planting clovers, especially when the ground becomes soft due to spring rains.
To enhance their growth, consider adding fertilizer for Clover. But make sure you don’t choose any strong fertilizer; otherwise, you may burn the plant’s root instead of increasing its growth.
● Preparing Soil For Planting
If you’re done choosing the seed and testing your soil, it’s high time to prepare the soil in your existing lawn. While preparing the soil, you need to pay more attention to cleaning weeds from the soil.
Weeds are basically plants that grow where they shouldn’t grow in lawns. Clover requires space on your existing lawn to set up properly. Set mowing at minimum settings and mow the lawn.
Make sure you’ve thinned the lawn, removed all husks, and killed weeds before starting spreading the seeds.
If you’re unsure if your soil has weeds or not, wait for 5 weeks before preparing the soil and kill them before planting the seeds.
However, another widely used way to kill Clover is burning the existing vegetation. The leftover burnt stuff will fertilize the seed of clovers.
● Scatter The Clover Seed
What spreading method you should use depends on your existing lawn’s size. For example, consider spreading the seeds by hand if you have a small lawn area. Again if you have a larger lawn area, use a spreader.
Besides, you can mix compost or sand with the clover seeds to prevent them from blending with grass seed.
● Watering Requirements
It’s really necessary to maintain the moisture of the soil while seedling. Your clovers will need about 30 inches of rain. If it doesn’t rain, you should water your clovers for 14 days straight.
And if the weather temperature is hot, you’ll need to water more. It’ll take the clovers between 7 to 10 days to sprout.
Which Is The Best Time To Plant Clovers?
The best and ideal time to plant clovers in your existing lawn is in spring, after the last frost date. If you plant clovers during the frost time, it’ll kill the baby clover plants.
Also, after the frost, there’ll be rain which will help you in establishing new crops. However, if you belong from areas where autumn has mild weather, you can also plant clovers during the fall.
Just make sure whenever you decide to plant clovers, the temperature remains over 4˚C to allow your clovers to establish.
On the other hand, if you choose forest seedlings, you may also plant them during last summer or at least 6 to 7 weeks before the freezing weather condition.
Maintaining Tips For Clover Lawn
Below we’ll share three maintaining tips for your clover lawn care:
- Don’t utilize herbicides and pesticides. Though herbicides are great for grass but not good for other plants, they can also kill your baby clover plants. Using these products may prevent your clovers from growing healthy.
- Avoid using a fertilizer with nitrogen. You don’t have to add additional nitrogen into the soil as clovers can manage it on their own. But if you see that grasses are taking over the lawn, consider using low-nitrogen-based fertilizers besides giving them adequate phosphorus and potassium.
- To make your Clover look tidy and nice, mow them sparingly. If you don’t want bees on your lawn, you need to mow down white clovers every time they appear. While mowing your lawn, leave the clippings. It will fertilize your existing clover lawn with organic matter.
FAQs
Does clover lawn require less water compared to grass
Yes, Clover requires less watering than grass. It’s because Clover has long and deep roots that can absorb moisture from the bottom of the soil. But grass can’t do that due to the fact that it has shorter roots; therefore, grass needs far more watering than Clover.
How long does Clover take to establish?
If you can sow the seed appropriately and prepare your existing lawn as described above, you should see the clovers sprout out in 2-3 days during the summer. It’s because clovers germinate quickly when the weather temperature is around 59F.
How often should you mow your clover lawn?
Some people never mow their clover lawn, but it’s necessary to maintain desired clover height. You should mow clovers at a low height when you don’t want flowers throughout the growing interval. And at higher heights during the fall and spring if you like flowers.
Does Clover grow faster than the grass?
Generally yes, clovers can grow faster than grasses. It’s because clovers have high sunlight tolerance and can manage their nitrogen by themselves that grass can’t. So when sunlight burns the grasses, clovers remain green.
Should I fertilize a Clover lawn?
No, you don’t necessarily have to fertilize the clover lawn. But if you want quick results, you can use one. However, you have to know the ideal fertilizer ratio since clovers don’t require nitrogen, and a wrong nitrogen ratio can kill all the clovers.
How long does it take for Colver to grow from seed?
When you plant clovers during the summer, clovers generally sprout between 7 to 15 days.
Conclusion
So from the above discussion, you must have learned how to plant clovers in existing lawn successfully. When you plant clovers, you must have the right pH level of soil and weeds-free ground so that you can expect a better growth result.
Similarly, you have to pay attention while spreading the seeds. Ensure the grass seed and clover seed don’t cluster together and create an uneven clover-covered ground. We hope all the information above was useful to you.
