I’m continuing to bag grass clippings from the back yard and put them in between rows/hills in the garden. I should have been doing this for years, but didn’t have a bagger on the old gas mower (drowned in the flood). Our new Ego battery-powered mower (which I love) came with a bagger.
The back yard needs nutrients removed from it because of the chicken poop that’s constantly being spread. The front yard has much less chicken activity, so we mulch the clippings up there to keep the lawn healthy.
We have a lot of white clover in the lawn, which, in my humble opinion, is a good thing. It’s not grass, so it’s not desirable from your typical lawn nazi’s perspective, but monocultures are abnormal and can only be maintained with a lot of work and/or herbicides. And clover is a legume, so should be fixing N and improving the soil. You never know when you’ll have to dig up your lawn and plant something for people to eat.
I seem to recall that I had a bag of white clover seed and broadcast it in the lawn at some point…but I don’t remember any details beyond that. Anyway, that was years ago, and it’s well-established now. I’ve read that white clover plants only live a few years, so you have to be sure you let it go to seed to maintain it in your lawn, which means not mowing it until it’s done flowering and setting seed. A higher mowing height also helps with this.
There was an area of the lawn that had a wood pile on it last summer that killed almost everything. It was still very bare a couple of months ago. Now, it’s got a good stand of clover on it (plus various other weeds and grasses), so that clover clearly got seeded from somewhere.
Anyway, I love our lawn. It looks great, and is a healthy and diverse ecosystem containing several kinds of edible plants (including clover š). And, unlike many other pesticide- and herbicide-laced local lawns I could name, it could be converted into a garden virtually overnight.
Ending and Beginning 
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