Organic Gardening Info from Peaceful Valley

PVFS Customer Email – Staff response.
Question:

Hello!

I would need to order white clover seeds to reshape my lawn, but before
doing so, I need to know:

1- how to seed them, and how to water them until they make roots. I have a
sprinkler system in my lawn (watering often between 4 an 8 in the morning,
as advised, does not stop my lawn from burning or dying!)

2- how would the white clover do under trees (maple, pine, but mostly oaks)
with dense shade, and where the grass has almost totally vanished. I know
that the acidity of the pine needles on the ground kills about everything,
but I cannot cut it.

I live in upstate New York, around the city of Rochester, and our Summer
has been especially hot and humid this year, as you must know. The lawn is
sunny areas is all yellow or gone. The only green spots I have are the ones
with clover. The white clovers even keep the grass it covers green. Just
amazing!

Thank you very much for your help.

Sincerely

Answer:

We carry 3 types of perennial white clover, (see page 62 of our main
catalog). The White Dutch prefers a little shade and the other two are more
heat tolerant.  The best time to put the seed out would be in fall when the
air temperature cools and the soil is still warm. You must keep the seed
damp after putting it out, which can mean watering 3 or more times per day
if its still warm out. When you see a green flush, you can beginning
increasing the length of time you water and water less frequently as the
weather dictates.
Clover is in the legume family.  They are able to take nitrogen from the air
and fix it in the soil.  They are sometimes hampered by commercial nitrogen
fertilizing.
Hope this information helps,

Cover cropping is a hot topic at Peaceful Valley right now! Wise farmers and gardeners are planting cool season annual legumes and grasses now in order to till in in the spring. It’s a cheap and practical way to add good nutrition and organic matter to the soil.

For the more poetically inspired, I came across a beautiful poem by Wendell Berry, an eloquent writer and careful farmer:

“Enriching the Earth”
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
~~~~~~~~~~

If you liked that, you’ll LOVE “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
Here’s a snippet, “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.”