When I got a lawn, I didn’t do anything to it. It gets mowed every two weeks, but that’s it. After a particularly nasty drought most of the grass died. A few months later, clover started popping up on its own. It’s much better than grass, and now a bunny likes to visit us.
She’s #4 all time on there! I took this better picture this week but hadn’t posted it yet because it’s “babie week” there.
Everything about this comment brings me so much joy
We get lots of bunny visitors at my place as well, but I noticed a couple have crazy big ticks around their ears. Luckily we haven’t gotten any in the house or anything, but has def made me less “pro-bunny” lately.
That shouldn’t make you less pro-bunny. It should make you more pro-possum. It’s an ecosystem. We threw it out of wack, but there are things that help keep tick populations down.
Possums don’t actually eat ticks (but we should still be pro-possum for other environmental reasons)
https://outdoor.wildlifeillinois.org/articles/debunking-the-myth-opossums-dont-eat-ticks
Turns out they will eat ticks in a study that only fed them ticks.
And they don’t even have proof that they ate those ticks- odds are the ticks were all embedded in their skin lol
Unfortunately the thing about opossums, as well as chickens and guinea fowl, being tick control may not be empirically supported.
https://extension.psu.edu/do-chickens-guinea-fowl-or-opossums-control-ticks
I would love to be proven wrong if anyone else has other info :(
Also chicken right?
Don’t want to say where I’m at, but we don’t really have possums in my area :/
The rabbit in my yard had a pretty big tick on it. I just don’t walk where the tall plants are.
Just in case people are wondering about this, it’s true. Clover is a legume. Meaning it gets nitrogen from the air and puts it into the soil. This effectively means the clover is fertilizing the soil. Seeing lots of clover can be a sign that the soil lacks nitrogen and can’t grow much else.
Slight clarification: Dutch Clover (trifolium repens) under nitrogen deficient conditions, at temperatures above 50F and below 95F, and with the correct rhyzobium species present, with soil pH between 5.5 & 8.0, can produce nitrogen that is stored in its tissue.
When clover is mowed and the clippings mulched back into the soil, the decomposition of the leaves adds nitrogen to the soil. If you remove the clippings the nitrogen goes with it.
Clover doesn’t just release more nitrogen into the soil, it takes a bit of work.
Interesting, I thought the N would be stored in the little nodules on the roots? For other legumes you’re supposed to cut them of, not pull them out, so that the roots with their nodules remain and release the N during the rotting process. Is this bullshit?
The nodules in the roots are the happy little homes that the plant provides for the bacteria to grow and reproduce in.
It’s the production location, not the storage location. The nitrogen is incorporated into proteins and used all over the plant. It’s especially concentrated in legume seeds.
For example winter peas can produce up to 400lbs/acre of nitrogen during its growing season (newer varieties like Icicles etc). If you removed the top and the seeds you remove around 350-375lbs of N. So you get 25-50lns of N per acre if you leave just the roots. So it’s best to incorporate the entire plant in when the seeds reach soft dough stage.
Iirc, it’s stored all over the plant. Any bits left on/in the ground will contribute to nitrogen in the soil.
50°F = 10°C
95°F = 35°C
I plant it in the walkways of my vegetable garden. Besides fixing nitrogen, it makes the Bees happy, and it’s tasty in salads and mixed greens.
Oh, and it’s super satisfying to walk on in barefeet
And here I thought sticking mine on the side of my house was the way to go…
Oh, and it’s super satisfying to walk on in barefeet
Unless you happen upon one of those bees.
“I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the
birds in the sky.Bees in the Clover”I have my own Bee army, we would never hurt each other .
Having been stung on the sole of my foot by a bee, I 100% don’t recommend it.
We really need to outlaw advertizing that double as disinformation campaigns.
That’s like 99.9% of ads.
Exactly
Fake: Anon goes outside
Gay: Gardening (? idk this one is a struggle)
Fellas, is it gay to garden?
all that bending over? getting dirty fingers? getting heads off plants? sowing seeds? hell yeah
sowing seeds?
I think this is significantly less gay than you think
Some people are more versatile than others…
If anything I think paying close attention to a lawn is classic heterosexual male behaviour
Then you would think Hank Hill would have a great time at the Gay Rodeo
My GOD that would have been a good episode! Hank gets invited to a rodeo, says no. Tells Peggy, she’s like “Go Hank, it’ll be fun!” He says he doesn’t like Rodeo’s, they’re just show and not real sport or something else Hank Hill-ish. Peggy convinces him to go, he has an amazing time, all the while completely oblivious to the fact that it’s a gay rodeo. Makes a comment in passing that’s completely innocuous, but in the context of a gay rodeo makes everyone think he’s a power bottom. Gets the nickname “Backdoor Buckaroo,” which Hank thinks is in appreciation of how much work he does helping everyone out behind the scenes.
The last day of the rodeo he invites the family and friends and Mr. Strickland to the rodeo, and Peggy explains to him what’s going on, right before they announce a special thank you to “Hank ‘Backdoor Buckaroo’ Hill” over the loud speaker. Queue “ahhhh” scene
That’s honestly better than every King of the Hill episode I’ve ever seen.
How do I submit this to the writing team behind the reboot? It would be seriously good.
The end could have the guys in the alley all snickering and calling him Backdoor Buckaroo, and Hank being super embarrassing but like “it was still the best goshdarn vacation I ever had”
I don’t know but, being a damn Yankee and straight man, I was sure the gay rodeo was something you invented specifically for this plot. I was about to comment you should have a side plot that explains what a gay rodeo is and what it’s purpose is.
Then I thought, “What if gay rodeo is a real thing and you could just look it up yourself?”
“But Self”, I replied “Wouldn’t a gay rodeo just be a rodeo?”
“Bro, you literally have access to all the worlds information at your fingertips- find out!”
So that’s what I did. To my delight I found out I was right and wrong. Gay rodeo is pretty much just a rodeo, but it’s also a safe space where gay folk that lived in a backwards ass culture could be themselves- and had been since the 1970’s!
You definitely should add a side plot that explains what gay rodeo is and it’s purpose, because it’s beautiful :)
Good luck!
I think that already IS an episode isn’t it? I distinctly recall something about a rodeo where the clowns end up being gay, but it was bill that got mistaken for one of them after he found joy in being a clown?
As a hetero male I can confirm. I live in the northern hemisphere, in mild continental climate. In this time of the year everything dries up. Grass retreat to their roots/rhizomes. Wild flowers curl up their cute little leaves while bees visit their tiny flowers that defy the heat. This shit is lit!
I was listening to some good EDM while gardening yesterday. Just grooving around and then saw a spot that needed a bit of hand weeding.
ACCIDENTAL TWERKING
Gardening is gay because of roses. Gardens often contain roses, the Japanese word for rose is bara. Barazoku, meaning the rose tribe was Japan’s first gay magazine. The magazine was named so because the rose is a prominent symbol of male homosexuality in Japan. This is because of the Greek myth of King Laius who would have affairs with boys under rose trees. You might argue that gardening is not gay if the garden includes no roses but you would be wrong. Roses grow in soil, the word soil is gay. Therefore any form of gardening is inherently gay.
Grass isn’t inherently a bad idea for a lawn, it’s just specific to your individual climate. The main issue is that most of the grasses people plant are native to much cooler climates in Europe.
I have a grass lawn, but it’s a native Buffalo grass. It’s much more drought tolerant than clover, flowers a couple times a year, doesn’t require any maintenance, and provides a natural habitat for native wildlife.
Clover isn’t actually much better than most grasses if you are trying to support the natural biodiversity. It’s not native to north America, and thus only supports a small range of wildlife that’s adapted to it.
A Lot of America’s natural ground cover is actually low lying shrubs and flowering plants.
I just and to add in here that supporting your non-native bees with clover is still worthwhile. Clovers can be a good add on if you want a traditional lawn
Clover is non-native in my area. I’ve witnessed native bumblebees visiting clover, but they show a much stronger preference for larger forbs, both native and non-native. For one, they can’t nap on clover (too small, I assume, even when allowed to grow to full size). Additionally, I haven’t seen pollinators other than honeybees and bumblebees at the clover, whereas other flowers attract dozens of various species (as well as their predators, creating a fuller ecosystem).
For sure native forbs can attract more. Its not an either or, but rather a both situation. Pollinator friendly Forbs where you can and clover within your turf lawn. I personally also have been adding self-heal (mild successfully) and creeping thyme (not that successfully) into my lawn. Its a move on all front situation in my yard
For sure, I didn’t mean to negate your comment (more of a “yes and”). However I do think it is important in these conversations to acknowledge that clover isn’t a great option for yards when it comes to supporting pollinators (native or otherwise), just a better one. That said, for folks who have to have a grass yard (for rental agreement, HOA, etc reasons), clover is a great add-in. I prefer the native self-heal myself, but it has similar purple flowers and growth pattern to the invasive creeping charlie, so clover is probably the appealing, stealthier choice of the two in many places.
There are several clover species native to NA.
Most are only found in the west, but theres a few eastern ones like Trifolium kentuckiense.
But sure, the common clover in most peoples yards is likely Trifolium pratense or Trifolium repens
There are native clovers, but they aren’t what you would really classify as ground cover.
Trifolium stoloniferum probably would fit that bill. But its easily outcompeted by other plants.
That’s buffalo clover right? Isn’t that extinct, or like really close to it?
Its endangered, once thought to be extinct. Like i said, its easily out competed so it relied of large harbivores to eat/trample the competition.
Would be cool to see it make a comeback on some of the buffalo reservations. Don’t know if those places have quite the herd size to make it feasible. Amazing what some of the vast herds could do to transform the prairies back in the day.
One of the things I remember when I visited Florida as a kid from the UK was how weird their grass was. It’s all spiky.
And kept trying to point this out but for some bizarre reason my parents weren’t interested.
In my region (Tennessee) the most popular intentional lawn grass is Tall Fescue, which is very soft, but it doesn’t spread laterally, so when gaps happen due to heat and such, spiky/hard crab grass fills in the gaps, and isn’t killed by broad-leaf herbicide since it’s also grass, so semi-maintained lawns quickly get taken over. The lawns with no herbicide regimen get taken over by clover instead, so you end up with a horseshoe of sorts where the completely un-maintained lawns (fescue and clover) and meticulously-maintained lawns (pure fescue) are soft, but the lawns in the middle are spiky.
It’s called St Augustine grass and it’s everywhere down there since it’s supposedly very hardy, heat resistant, and salt resistant, which is important in hot, wet, and salty Florida. And I know exactly what you mean about the spikiness; it’s not soft at all.
There are some native clovers but otherwise yes
There are native clovers, but they aren’t really what you would utilize for ground cover.
Most people just cut the grass too short. If you can’t put foot under the cutting deck, it’s too low.
Grass has very little leaves. So they need to be longer to stay green.
Heat wave coming? Cut the grass even longer. Longer grass keeps the moisture in the ground too.
Anon is right, but ONLY ABOUT THIS!!! I’ve heard Nevada has been using this to conserve water. Im gonna put some on my lawn tomorrow.
Clover is a great drought resistant “carpet” as a replacement for the water greedy grass yards (which are also largely impractical).
Also great for bee life and other pollinators. The reason they stopped putting it in lawns was because of selective herbicides that kill all plants EXCEPT grass and some marketing fuck-knuckle (string them all up and ban the teaching of marketing) decided that clover had to go so they could sell herbicides that also kill pollinating insects. Happened in the 50s I think.
some marketing fuck-knuckle (string them all up and ban the teaching of marketing)
Based, I love that this platform doesn’t remove morally correct comments like this one
Would planting clover in an already moist lawn be not a so great idea if you’re trying to keep moisture away from your house?
OMG… Are you saying nature has better solutions than chemical companies?
Blasphemy.
As a chemist, you made me laugh. But, there is really nothing natural about a lawn.
Sorry, Monsanto found some of their GMO corn in your field after that comment. Time to give up the farm!
Of course not. You can’t monetize nature all that directly, so clearly it’s not “better”. /s
There was this study, I think it was German, of fields for hay (herbivores eat it). They had monocultures and then fields with mixes. While some monocultures did very well some years the mixes did best on average - better defined as producing more biomass. The same probably goes for lawns.
this makes sense from a mathematical perspective, because you’re diversifying risks so in a year where one type of plant doesn’t grow well, another can take over. so it’s more likely that there’s a plant in there that can grow well that year.
Yeah, it didn’t blow my mind but I’m glad that people do the science so we can actually quantify these things. They had big improvements up to 4 species and then the gains were less as they increased it.
Of course this doesn’t mean you can drop monoculture in agriculture. You still need your grains to mature at the same time so you can harvest mechanically. Buyers don’t want mixes of stuff either. All that jazz. But lawns would probably be much better off with mixed plants.
big improvements up to 4 species
interesting. is that why we plant 4 different types of plant on a field in a row? i.e. year-on-year cycle
Three Sisters in native american agriculture. (three is approximately four)
This has been known for quite a while now. I’ve seen US Ag short films from the 1930s on the benefits of pasture blends and the increased tonnage of feed it produces and how best to manage it to maximize the feed values for greater profits.
Growing up on a small dairy farm we used a mix of alfalfa, red clover, and timothy or maybe fescue. It’s been few decades. It was pretty much up to providing decent forage even in dry years or on light ground.
I don’t know what you intended to link to, but this just links to an image search results page with a random assortment of seemingly unrelated results
Works on .world
It should be fixed now. I am not sure how I screwed it up. Tried again and it pasted the actual image instead—like it has every time before.
It’s okay, we all make mistakes—just ask my parents.
Only in Lemmy would we see “ask my parents” instead of “ask YOUR parents”. We’re all a bunch of ADHD, autistic, low self esteem bunch of people, aren’t we?
I blame my phone
For OP it’s currently an embed of this image: https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a376f402-ef52-4bd7-a3a8-a35cd68a2f1d.gif
(and yes, as mbin gang I also still just see a duckduckgo search link lol)
Just wait till this guy hears about moss…
Clovers are far superior to grass. We had them mixed in pretty thoroughly growing up on our brand new property with the shittiest clay dirt imaginable. The farmland it all replaced was undoubtedly packaged and sold somewhere else.
is everything else on this site also true?
Only when greentexted.
Greentext knows its green stuff.
I know that clover is good at fixing atmospheric (gaseous) nitrogen and turning it into a more solid form that plants can use (much like nitrogen fertilizers), but I am not smart enough to know if it is particularly drought-resistant
It lives on far less water than grass in my experience.
Depends on the species of grass
Hard Fescue & Sheep fescue have it beat.
Tall fescue is about equal.
Blue grass, fine fescues, and perennial ryegrass require more water.
Buffalo and Blue Gramma grasses are definitely more drought resistant than clover. They don’t grow very tall either, so you can stop mowing toward the end of the season, let them go to seed, and that will naturally fill in any gaps that might have formed due to drought, damage, etc.
> Trust everything on 4chan
Possibly the worst lesson imaginable.
