HelpfulGardener.com

I have an area about a half an acre in size that I want to seed with white clover. I know it can be invasive and I'm okay with that. Our property abuts grazing pasture on three sides, so if the clover invades the neighboring fields, it'll add to the pasture.

We're coming up on what I think will be the last mowing of the year. The area now has some grass (what kind, I don't know) and a lot of weeds. It wasn't kept at all; the previous owner just let it go wild and mowed when the weeds were tall enough that he couldn't find his dogs in it.

Can I broadcast the clover seed after the mow or should I pin cardboard to the ground to kill patches and then seed the bare areas?

What helped to establish patches of clover in my lawn was to broadcast seeds in bare gaps where annual weeds in the grass had died -- I figured if the clover could germinate and get ahead of other weeds in those patches, they would manage to out-compete them, and they did.

I imagine you could get similar results by raking manually or by using a dethatching machine first?

Ugh! Hand raking a half an acre doesn't sound like something I can handle. When we moved in this past February, I seem to recall the ground was kinda patchy with grass-like growth in some areas and bare ground in others. From what you said, it sounds like I can use the cardboard to bare some patches and seed them, yeah?