White Clover - Green Manure

The White Clover, in Latin Trifolium repens, is a small creeping and stoloniferous perennial plant of the legume family cultivated as a forage plant, often used as a spring green manure, but also mixed with grasses as an alternative to lawns in dry areas. Like all plants in the legume family, it has the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil. Its natural vigor competes with "weeds" and its spreading and abundant roots retain the soil, protecting it from erosion. Finally, its dense vegetation limits the phenomenon of compaction due to rain. Used as green manure, white clover can be sown in any type of soil, even very chalky, from March to June. Once buried, the decomposed residues will naturally enrich the soil with nitrogen.

The White Clover, also known as Dutch Clover or Creeping Clover, is a very common herbaceous plant in France, Europe, and North America. It naturally grows in meadows and lawns and spreads through stolons that can reach up to 40 cm (15.7 in) in length. Its characteristic leaves are usually compound, consisting of 3 leaflets, but statistically, once in every 10,000 cases, there may be 4 leaflets on a single leaf! The long flowering period of White Clover extends from April-May to September, in the form of white spherical heads, sometimes slightly pinkish. Rich in sweet nectar, they are highly appreciated by bees and bumblebees.

Widely used in permaculture, green manures have numerous benefits: they enrich and loosen the soil while preventing the establishment of adventive plants. They also have the advantage of forming a vegetative cover that protects loamy soils from rain compaction and sandy soils from leaching. They can be sown throughout the year, and they are crushed before seed formation to incorporate them through shallow digging or left in place as mulch.

White Clover is sown from March to June, it remains in place for at least 3 months and must be mowed before flowering. Do not let it establish for too long, as it would then be quite difficult to eliminate.