Ground cover is important for a number of reasons. It helps prevent erosion, helps hold moisture in the soil, adds organic matter to the soil, prevents random weeds from taking over, and many other things. I will be incorporating many different kinds of ground cover as I start building up my homestead. I don’t want to plant grass anywhere that we will have to mow, so I will be using ground cover in lace of grass as well.
The first place I am incorporating ground cover is my grape arbor (future arbor that is). Between the grape vines in the ground I decided to go with strawberries for ground cover. The leaves of the strawberry plants will spread out nicely and help with the moisture in the ground. Strawberries also multiply and spread themselves out pretty quickly. I did mulch between the plants as well, but strawberry plants give an obvious added bonus. Once the grape vines get big, they may shade out the strawberries and I may have to replace them with shade tolerant plants, but for now, this should work perfectly.
For the path of the arbor I decided on clover. Clover handles being walked on very well. It is also a wonderful source of pollen for the bees, we don’t have our own yet, but that will happen. Finally, clover is also a nitrogen fixer. I’m not sure if the plants are close enough to the grapes to provide them with anything in the way of nitrogen, but maybe once the vines get big and they spread out it will. Oh well, it’s a good thought.
There are all my little clover seeds. Pretty exciting stuff, right? I gave the ground a quick raking to loosen the dirt, spread the seeds over the ground pretty thick, gave them some water and covered the whole area with a light covering of leaves. There is a lot of direct sunlight here, so I figured I would attempt to keep some moisture in the ground until the clovers (hopefully) start growing. A month or so from now, this should look really great. We will see.
Building a New England Homestead 