How to Get Rid of Clover in Lawn (Or Keep It On Purpose)

Clover is the one lawn weed that is also a lawn feature, and which of those it is depends entirely on what you want.

But before either decision there is a fact that makes the whole thing easier: clover is not competing with your grass for nitrogen. It makes its own.

Clover Makes Its Own Nitrogen

This single fact explains everything else on this page.

White clover is a legume. MSU Extension describes the mechanism plainly: it hosts rhizobacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen into plant available nitrogen. The plant manufactures its own supply out of the air.

Grass cannot do that. Grass depends on what is in the soil, or what you apply.

So picture two lawns side by side. On a well-fed one, the grass is dense and vigorous and simply crowds clover out — clover has no advantage there. On a hungry one, the grass thins while the clover carries on regardless, and the gaps fill with the plant that did not need the fertiliser. Penn State states the outcome directly: white clover is more likely to form large patches in the turf that is not adequately fertilized with nitrogen.

Two more conditions Penn State names, both of which point the same way:

• It grows best in full sun, though it will also colonise partially shaded turf that receives fertiliser.
• It produces stolons and can creep into thin turf — so once a gap exists, it spreads sideways into it rather than waiting for seed.

Read together, clover is a reading of your lawn before it is a weed problem. A clover invasion is telling you the turf is thin and short of nitrogen.

The Actives That Work, And The One That Is Missing

If you want it gone, buy for the active ingredient rather than the front of the bottle. Two extension services publish shortlists, and they overlap usefully.

Penn State: this weed is best controlled by herbicides containing dicamba, clopyralid, fluroxypyr, and quinclorac.

Michigan State: excellent activity comes from fluroxypyr, triclopyr or quinclorac.

Quinclorac and fluroxypyr appear on both lists, which makes either of them the safest thing to look for on a label.

The triclopyr product we review names clover on its own front panel, and triclopyr is on Michigan State’s list — but only Michigan State’s. Read that as a second choice rather than a first, and note it is also the answer for creeping charlie and wild violet, which the two-list actives do not handle.

One check worth making before you buy any of this. Confirm the plant is actually clover. Penn State’s trifoliate comparison turns on a marking: white clover carries a whitish watermark shaped like an inverted V on each leaflet, and its look-alikes do not. Heart-shaped leaflets with a yellow flower are oxalis, which spreads by rhizome as well as seed and needs a different plan — how to get rid of oxalis covers that case.

Now the absence, stated carefully because the distinction matters. 2,4-D — the active in most three-way lawn products — is on neither list. Neither service says it fails against clover. But neither names it among the effective ones either. So if the bottle already in your shed is a straight 2,4-D product, do not assume it will finish clover; check for one of the four above.

If you would rather not use a synthetic hormone herbicide at all, the iron route has clover on its label and burns it down without touching the grass — with the limitation that it is a burndown and does not kill roots, so it needs repeating:

Timing: Penn State is specific — fall applications of herbicides are often the most effective means of controlling white clover. Same physiology as autumn broadleaf treatment generally: the plant is moving carbohydrates down to its roots for winter and carries the herbicide with them. When autumn actually arrives is a state question, and fall lawn care has the windows.

The Fix That Lasts Is Not A Spray

Herbicide removes the clover that is there. It does nothing about the reason it was there, which means next year runs the same experiment.

Penn State’s durable answer is cultural: infestations of white clover can be reduced by improving turf density through good establishment procedures.

MSU gives the number to aim at: 2 pounds of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet per year, split over two applications, to ensure the turf is dense and competitive — with more where use or soil conditions demand it.

So the honest sequence is:

1. Feed to a real rate. Two pounds of N per 1,000 sq ft per year, split. Our fertilizer arithmetic guide converts that into bag quantities, and when to fertilize has the split.
2. Overseed the thin areas, because clover creeps into gaps by stolon — see when to overseed.
3. Spray in autumn if you still want this season’s clover gone.
4. Mow at the top of your range, which shades the ground and denies stolons the light they need — mowing height.

Step 3 is the one everybody starts with, and it is the only one that has to be repeated every year if you skip the others.

The Other Option: Keep It On Purpose

This is no longer a fringe position, and the version bred for lawns is microclover — a selection of white clover that Illinois Extension describes as having smaller leaves and a slower, less aggressive growth habit than the common kind, so it mixes into turf rather than forming the clumps you are reading this page to remove.

One fact decides whether it is even an option for you, and it is permanent:

Most broadleaf herbicides labeled for use in lawns will kill microclover.

Clover is a broadleaf. Every product that removes dandelion, plantain or creeping Charlie removes your clover with it. Seeding a clover lawn means giving up whole-lawn broadleaf spraying, for good.

If that trade sounds acceptable, the seeding rates, cultivars, climate limits and the honest failure modes are all in microclover lawn pros and cons. If it does not, the rest of this page is the removal route.

So Which Is It

The question is not really “how do I kill clover”. It is which lawn you want to maintain.

If you are unsure, note that the first two steps of removing it — feeding properly and overseeding the gaps — are also just good lawn care, and they are reversible. The clover decision can wait until autumn. Buying seed is the harder one to undo.

For the wider weed picture, lawn weed identification covers reading which stress each weed is reporting, and creeping Charlie and wild violet covers the two broadleaf weeds that genuinely do need chemistry rather than fertility.

One mowing regime actively favours clover: UF/IFAS notes creeping-type weeds such as clover may increase under the frequent cutting a robotic mower delivers, even as overall weed cover falls. Do robot mowers improve lawn health explains why upright weeds lose and low spreaders win.