year-round living mulch?

[Steph]

I was wondering if anybody has any experience with a year-round living mulch. I'm wanting to use dutch white clover and when it comes time to plant the garden just clear out small spots of the clover where I need to plant the seeds or plants.Will this work?

[Pharmerphil]

Yes steph, it will and I have done it in the past, and was toying with the thought of doing it again.

[tashak]

How much water does white clover need in an arid windy area in the summer?
My priorities, due to limited water, are first my fruit trees, then my garden plots, then other trees and flowers.
I'm shifting more and more to doing a lot of growing under frost netting in late fall/winter/very early spring, due to water cost. That's when we get some rain and definitely snow, and the greens are especially welcome in the Nov.-March months. (Food banks especially love garden greens in the more expensive winter months, too.)
Incidentally, when I uncovered one plot today, I discovered that some radishes from last year have come up, and are close to edible size--happy surprise.

[HillsideDigger]

My north facing hillside gardening site was graded clear of trees and stumps about 25 years ago when the house I now live in was constructed on the flat ridge at the top of this hillside.

The hillside was seeded with white and red clover and once or twice a year the clover and the grass, weeds, trees, etc. that grew with the clover was cut with a tractor and bushhog by my father-in-law.

My father-in-law is now 88 years old and still operates his tractor but we no longer let him on this hillside. About 3 years ago, I started cutting the hillside with a power push mower, trying to favor the clover and while scattered it covers at least half of the site and 2 years ago I decided to commence planting rows of crops on this site. There is a large gardening area here on the flat ridge and on the south facing slope but the soil is much harder and tends to dryout much more readily than the north facing slope, I had rather avoid the tedium of irrigation.

Anyhow, my planting technigue in the clover is to rip a deep furrow along a contour with a heavy hoe and then scape into the furrow about 2' of the surface soil and ground cover from above the furrow resulting in a 2' or so wide level shelf on the slope, place seeds on top of this and then cover with a layer of decomposed leaf litter and dirt from the nearby woods.

Sometimes the results are very good, some of my attempts need further refining of technigue (more leaves and woods dirt which has a large content of worm castings). My family and neighbors say, just go buy a truck load of chemical fertilizer each year, which my father-in-law does and even with the use of a tractor and all sorts of attached devices, his efforts result in a lot of plowed ground, fairly level, but not all that much production, still remarkable for his age and I am considered, uh, nonconventional! ;)

[coldspring]

I tried the dutch white clover a few years ago. It was hard to control and it sucked out all the moisture from the garden.