Lets talk grass - Clover polyculture vs monoculture sod grass

This is what you've been taught:
Raking leaves is good.
Good healthy grass is good.
Clover is a weed. Remove it.
Dandelion is a weed. Remove it.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. All lies.Show more

People rake up all their leaves, put them in bags, and then put them at the end of the street to get picked up. Then they go out to the big box store and buy fertilizer for their grass, because it's dying.

It's stupid, you're stupid, but it's not your fault, you were lied to. The grass clippings feed the grass. Leaves feed the grass. The grass clippings are a source of Nitrogen, you know, exactly like the Nitrogen fertilizer you are buying at Walmart. The leaves are a source of Carbon. Carbon and Nitrogen together will compost and make soil/nutrients for your trees/grass to eat. This is kind of what nature has been doing for a billion years before grass companies pulled clover seeds from grass seed mixes, sold you leaf bags, and sold you fertilizer. Nice racket they have going on?

If you remove either grass clippings or leaves from your lawn, you are a doofus. If you then spend money on fertilizer, you are an even bigger doofus. Now your grass has no food. Your soil microbiology starts starving and dying. You have nothing alive in your lawn anymore. If you fertilize you make the situation worse, because nothing learns how to feed itself. Your grass/trees/garden plants don't develop fine root hairs or extensive root systems... but who needs it when that doofus is feeding me? So now you created a system of dependence. It's like those parents that do everything for their kids and wonder why their 20 year old doesn't know how to do laundry or pay their bills or save money. What did you expect?

instead, mow your grass high and leave the clippings. In the Fall, mow the leaves (to shred them) and leave them on the lawn. Sow clover back into the lawn, so that you have nitrogen fixing plants again. These plants are in-situ (original) fertilizers (as natural and organic as it gets), and they literally pull the Nitrogen out of the air and put it in the soil. Why pay for Nitrogen fertilizer when the air is mostly Nitrogen? Ever think of how stupid that is, and how there's likely a natural system that does that all by itself in some kind of symbiotic relationship?

Clover
So why clover? Clover is perfect for a lawn. It's what you would create if you could sit down with 100 of the brightest minds on the planet and bio-engineer the perfect grass companion.

It's great for a lawn because it's short. It exists under the grass blades, and can survive constant mowing. You won't even know it's there, except for the fact that your lawn is actually green. Even more, it has a wide leaf which provides stands up to traffic and creates shade to the soil beneath it, protecting soil microbiology from harmful UV light, keeping your soil life alive.

Clover... What an MVP plant, huh

So, store water IN the land, not ON the land. Build organic matter in your soil and you can't go wrong. Build food for you and nature, and let life back in. Stop buying cookie cutter cut and paste neighborhoods with nothing but ornamental and sod grass... food for nothing. Build food, flowers, clover, fruit bushes and trees. Invite life back into your life. Invite wilderness. Side benefit? If works better, looks better, AND is easier.

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Music credits:

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