Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
seeds, you can keep just a few plants for this purpose, and cut the rest down. If you have
bare soil during the summer, legumes work great to fill that in, too.
Legumes also contribute to an increase in organic matter and weed control, although
not as much as grasses. Also, since they break down much faster than grasses when you
knock them down, due to their relatively higher nitrogen content, they don't provide a
long-lasting mulch. The positive side of that is that they do release their nutrients more
quickly to plants than grasses.
If you're planning a lawn area and are a patient person, you might plant a legume cover
crop such as clover or trefoil for a year before installing the lawn, for all of the above be-
nefits. It's no fun trying to maintain a lawn that was planted in poor soil. You can seed
right into that clover and watch each year as the grass slowly outcompetes the legume —
provided your soil is healthy.
