Clover lawn round #1 - Microclover

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I admit that I bought into the marketing for microclover. It seemed like polite, well-mannered clover. At first, everything seemed fine. The clover came up, it was adorable.


Micro clover sprouts, May 30, 2017
May 30, 2017 - clover sprouts

Micro clover sprouts, May 30, 2017
May 30, 2017 - clover shoots

Being cute and well behaved will only get you so far in the real world though.

After several weeks, and 2 rounds of seeding, the clover lawn was looking sparse and increasingly full of weeds.

Microclover sprouts June 2017
June 20, 2017
Microclover sprouts June 2017
June 20, 2017


In fairness to microclover, another problem was that we were not sure of the seeding rate. The OSC seeding package states that the seeding rate is 25 g/ 52 m2. We spread two packages and this should have been enough for the size of our yard. However, this seeding rate is likely for over-seeding a lawn (mixing clover in with existing grass) rather than starting a clover lawn from scratch. West Coast Seeds' seeding calculator for microclover provides a significantly higher seeding rate of 50g for 100 square feet for 100% clover which (in hindsight) seems more realistic.

We needed a new plan - on to Round #2...

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