Is it too late to put in garlic? Any tips? I've read about soaking cloves in apple cider vinegar and dipping in alcohol then rinsing. I'm not sure I'm into the whole alcohol thing...I'd like a better way.

Mandy

My Gramma always said to put the garlic in by Thanksgiving but she's in California so I didn't know what time was best out here...it gets colder in the winters here than it does there :-)

Looks like you're in the same zone I am so I'll take your word for it and give it a go.

If I have a while to get it in I might try to find some good hardnecks off the internet and order them next week too and plant it whenever it arrives. I don't mind smaller garlic next year--I just have to have it lol.

Thanks so much!

Okay, off to collect leaves for my massive compost project.

Mandy

One thing I didn't mention is loosen the soil well at least a shovel depth deep if possible. In sand not as important as in tighter ground. You can till it deep instead. It doesn't matter how you loosen it. Jay

"Most garden veggies are forgiving to a point." VERY true. This year I planted butternut squash REALLY late, didn't think I'd get any off the vines because I had missed that "right time" to plant... but wanted to try anyway. I got SIX squashes off those vines! True, they weren't very big, but they were tasty!

That makes gardening a whole lot more fun. :))

Beth

Because the climate conditions and weather can vary wildly from year to year, we all just have to experiment and figure out what works for us. And, what works one year or even several years in a row might not work in some other year. That is part of the 'magic' of gardening.....trying to figure out what works and why and how.

Dawn

I wish the maters were that easy too!

One thing I miss about Fort Worth, which is about 80 miles south of where we now live, is that the spring and fall weather were much less erratic. You could plant at about the same time every year and not have to worry much about a late freeze. It is very different here, and I am sure some of it is that we're in a frost pocket along the river and we get cold nights later than people on higher elevation only a mile or two away.

I've never seen weather as erratic as what we've had here the last ten years.....I think it makes the average first frost and average last frost dates virtually meaningless.

Here in Love County, just in the 11 years we've been here, we've had our last spring freeze as early as the first week in March and as late as the first week in May. In the fall, we've had the first freeze as early as Sept. 30th and as late as mid-December. How in the world anyone here ever knows what to do and when to do it is just beyond me.

I try to 'read' the weather and figure out what to do and when to do it, but mostly it is just a guessing game. And, as with any other game, you win some and you lose some.

Dawn

Thanks for the help everyone. And Jay, I'd love some garlic next year :-)

I'll try to remember to remind you :-) Thanks for being so generous with your stuff.

Mandy

I accuse you? No, dear friend, it is not an accusation....I merely speak the truth. You are (sigh) a tomato-growers enabler. If there were a Tomato-a-holics Anonymous, you'd have to join, but it would be OK because I would be a member too. LOL Go ahead and get everyone addicted to growing garlic, too, because home-grown is superior!

Personally, I freely admit to being addicted to veggie gardening (and my poor flowers get less and less attention every year). Once you are used to growing and eating your own, how can you ever go back to eating only commercially-raised produce? I think one of the main things wrong with our country nowadays is that not enough people are addicted to growing their own food!

It drives me crazy that so many people don't know that peanuts grow underground or that pineapples don't grow on palm trees! OK, I won't get wound up and start ranting and raving about it, but honestly, people need to know where their food comes from.....and those of us who raise some of our food at least understand where it comes from and what is involved in growing it, processing it, preparing it and eating it.

And, I feel it is an honor to be grouped with you and Ilene and the other veggie-growing addicts here even though I do not have my own bee costume or All-Terrain Crocs.

Dawn

I vow to plant bigger and better plants every year, and I swear to get my garlic in the ground this week (if the ground will ever dry up). I have not yet sunk to the level of off-road crocs or bee costumes, but I do some pretty weird things already. LOL

Not to get your started on a rant, Miss Dawn... but I had something REALLY funny happen a week or so ago. Talking to one of my online buddies who lives in Seattle. I was talking about growing up on my grandparents farm and walking rice levees... right? BLEW HER MIND. She thought all rice was grown in China or Japan. Seriously... :)

Beth

Jay, Not only does Ilene have garden class.....she has a bee costume! I wonder if she wears the crocs with the bee costume, because I know I couldn't compete with that!

Ilene, You know we all love you, and are jealous of your bee costume and crocs. I expect by this time next year, we'll all have bee costumes and all-terrain crocs, since you have set the standard so high. Now, once we all have brought our attire up to your standards, don't you go and change the rules of stylish gardening attire!

Dawn

I said that I would never wear a pair of those things, but when I broke my foot and was finished with the boot but still required a brace, it was the only shoe that I could wear. The only other thing I could get on was my athletic shoe but could barely tie the strings. Those big old wide fake crocs just slid right over it. I have two pairs and they are great for the garden but the soles are thin. Guess I should invest in the "real deal" for my all terrain walking.

God's in charge of the rain and the seeds,
and I'm in charge of all of the weeds. :-)

Mandy

Sharon

I do just fine with the "knock-off" crocks from WM, thank you very much! AND....I have a Crayola costume...so I'm somewhere around the bottom rungs of Ilene's ladder! Color me "hopeful"! LOL!

Seriously, I got all the garlic planted today that Jay graciously shared with me. It's not too late so you go, Mandy! If you plant it, it will grow! Felicity is going to have a wonderful winter watching and hoping!

Let's face it, we are ALL gardenholics or we wouldn't be posting here! Beth- she REALLY thought all rice was grown in China???? We NEED to take her into the fold....(I'm shakin' my head, sympathetically).

Paula

I think this year it is wet enough to grow rice here in our yard. : )

I have had people make all kinds of silly comments about plants. One of the best was from someone to whom I showed potato plants, and they wanted to know if the 'pretty little flowers' on the potato plants would turn into potatoes like tomato blooms give you tomato fruit. (grin) I've also had someone ask me if potatoes have a plant part? Huh? People (non-gardeners, I probably should say) seem to understand that tomatoes and peppers grow above-ground on plants, carrots grow in the ground (but just leave some carrots in the ground and let them flower and THAT freaks out some folks), corn grows on corn stalks, and
pumpkins grow on vines. After that, though, a lot of folks get confused. You can make them more confused if you tell them that broccoli plants are the flower bud part of that plant, or that lettuce will flower if you leave it in the ground too long and it goes to seed. Just try explaining asparagus, artichokes and sunchokes to non-gardeners who don't know a bud from a tuber from a shoot, etc.

I'm not making fun of people----merely pointing out that a lot of folks have no idea where food comes from. I once had a fairly precocious child explain to me that spaghetti grows in gardens, leading me to think maybe he'd had spaghetti squash at some point in his young life.

Lots of folks don't know okra pods are part of the flower structure of the okra plant. Couldn't we go on endlessly? And we've pretty much ignored a lot of nuts and fruit. Try explaining almonds to people who think that they planted an almond tree and instead got a tree with "pathetic peach-looking things". Life is funny.

And, then, try explaining 'noodling' (not gardening-related, I know, but certainly a favorite pastime in parts of Oklahoma) to people who are NOT from here. LOL

Finally, one of my favorite stories from Barbara Kingsolver's magnificent book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" is a brief story about her husband (Stephen Hopp), who moved to a tobacco-growing part of Appalachia after growing up elsewhere. While visiting at someone's house, he casually asked what was the name of the big-leaved, tall plant with pretty flowers that he saw everywhere (it was tobacco, of course), causing the gentleman at that house to grin broadly and say "You aren't from here, are you, son?" Every time I re-read the book and read that passage again, I break into the giggles. It is my favorite book and I highly recommend it for everyone who gardens, eats, cooks, or just likes well-written books.

Dawn

I hadn't even thought about the meat part of the equation. LOL Hamburger from hogs cracks me up.

Once, one of our neighbors had fresh bacon from a recently-slaughtered hog and gave us a package of it because we were giving them oodles of our extra tomatoes that summer. Our son's then-girlfriend was horrified to learn that people slaughter hogs, have them processed and eat the meat. (Leaving you to wonder if she has any idea where HER hamburger meat comes from!)

Try explaining the modern milk-collection process with milkers and plastic tubing and collection tanks to people who still think all of our milk comes from hand-milked cows. Try explaining how commercially-raised conventional eggs come from chickens crammed into cages so tightly that the chickens can't really walk or turn around. People would be horrified in many cases if they understood how some of their food is raised on conventional mega-farms.

Dawn

Paula, I did fill a large planter with garlic. If I can talk DH into cutting up some more of his scrap wood so I can build another planter I'll probably plant even more. We go through one elephant or two smalls every week. We eat it all the time--because we love it and because it's good for a medical condition or two that we have around here.

Do y'all think if I found a ladybug costume I could attract more of em to my property? lol. Could use some, only saw one or two this year. Have plans to order some in for the garden next year...then I'll have to go about making them happy enough to stay.

Isn't it amazing some of the things people think. I'm new to all of this too--other than my grammas peach ranch with it's garden and two pygmy goats each summer I don't have a clue. But I do want to learn :-) Some of the things I learn make me realize I'm as foolish as some of these people y'all are talking about. But for the record--I know animals are slaughtered, chickens are raised in deplorable conditions and bacon comes from pigs, hamburger from cows, etc. My daughter, however, was appalled to learn that chicken actually comes from chickens. I just figured she knew... but apparently she only thought they gave us eggs. LOL. DH just looked at her with his jaw gaping and then looked at me and said we really need to talk about these things with our kids more!

Oh well, there's time enough for it when we start dragging animals out here...for now she's just fascinated that the garlic will sit there all winter and come up in the spring--she's still half convinced she's right and it'll rot in the ground. Won't she be surprised lol. I can't wait to see her face.

Mandy

I have a food story that I think is funny and I think about it everytime I prepare fresh green beans. I am sure that most of you have snapped beans and come across one that didn't get picked quite soon enough, so you just shell it and keep the beans and throw the pod away. Normal practice, right?

One of my neighbors said that when his family cans green beans they put cooked pinto beans in the jar with the green beans. I thought he was kidding, so I said something about always having a few "shellies" in my jars also. He said, "No, we buy pinto beans at the store and cook them up and add them to the green beans because that is the way we like them, and we have always done it that way."

Now, can't you just imagine some little newly-wed trying to make her beans look just like her mother's or mother-in-laws and buying beans to go in them. I wonder how long the tradition will go on in this family? I hope they always can green beans with brown seed, otherwise that jar is going to look pretty weird with pintos added. This makes me smile everytime I think about it.

I didn't know rice grew well in Arkansas...hmm...learn something new everyday around here. Does that mean I can get my hands on locally (or almost locally) grown rice? That's cool. For the record I probably would have thought he was kidding too :-)

Oh, and Paula...if you wear your crayola costume out in the garden I want to see a picture of your hopeful face :-) That would be classic. Maybe it would attract some of the friendly bugs cause from a distance you'd look kinda like bright and cheery flowers lol.

I may never be able to pick green beans again without imagining them with pintos in em :-) I don't know why they liked them that way, though I guess it wouldn't be so bad. I've just always liked my gb's "au naturalle" lol. To each his own I guess. I really shouldn't talk for the looks I get from DH when I make a salad sometimes. Lol, he can't understand my idea of a good dressing.

One of our friends won't eat our eggs because they "don't look right". What's wrong with them? The yolks are a beautiful bright golden-yellow instead of the pale yellow of grocery story eggs! His young son loves 'em though, and likes the guinea eggs better than hen eggs. And, yes, of course I've explained that the golden-yellow yolks are fresher and healthier than pale yellow ones for a variety of reasons, but he still won't eat them...and he says they have 'too much flavor', which I don't understand. Maybe his taste buds are more sensitive than mine. Do home-grown eggs taste different? Yes. But I have always thought it was a better flavor. LOL

Lots of kids just don't think about hamburgers being from cows or bacon or pork sausage from pigs or chicken meat being from the actual birds themselves! I've also noticed that often, when kids figure out where the meat and milk and fish come from, they sometimes become vegetarians or vegans because the idea of eating animals repulses them.

Felicity could be right about the garlic too. I always try to plant the garlic in my raised beds that have the best drainage because a very wet and very cold winter can cause some of the garlic to rot. I've never lost all of it though, not even in 2004 when we had 48" of rain here (an amount that we'll surpass in 2009 unless it doesn't rain another single time this year). Even my non-gardening husband said just this morning that he hopes all the rain doesn't drown the garlic. If you have sandy or sandy loam soil, such rot is unlikely. If you have a heavier clay that holds a lot of moisture and drains slowly, it could happen.

Carol,

I love the bean story! What a hoot. It amazes me how some "family traditions" get started. LOL

I was in high school before I realized that Texas was a major rice-producing state. I knew we grew cotton, corn, maize, wheat, sunflowers, melons, and a wide assortment of other veggies and grains (and, of course, cows and sheep and pigs, but assumed rice grew somewhere with more water than you tend to find in Texas. However, I grew up in Fort Worth, and knew more about what grew in the blackland prairie areas and in west Texas and knew nothing about what grew in more eastern and southern parts of the state.

I learned some of the facts of the animal world very young, because my grandfather had a sheep ranch when I was very small, and another uncle raised rabbits and guinea pigs (by the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds)for medical research labs--and I knew at a young age that those animals were being used in ways I didn't want to think about! We also had a next-door neighbor who raised meat rabbits in hutches in his back yard, and I kept asking him over and over again "you eat your rabbits?" I couldn't imagine as a child than someone could eat rabbits.

Mandy, I love the ham story, although I originally heard it as a pot roast story decades ago...but the same principle applied!

I'm sure local rice probably is available somehow We just have to find it. (Wouldn't it be sad to do our research and then find out that most of the rice sold in this country is imported from other countries? Now I am almost afraid to look and see if I can find local rice for fear I'll find I cannot.) Also, rice might not be considered 'local' anymore because of the way it is bought by the brokers and then processed. It might be like milk in that product from local farmers gets mixed in with product from other places and you can't isolate it back to being grown locally even if some of it was.

What an interesting bunch of costumes we have. I once had a black-and-white cow costume, but I sold it at a garage sale before we moved here.

Dawn

My husband said that they almost never ate rice when he lived at home. It was a cash crop that they grew and sold and since you can't use it until it is processed, they just never ate rice. After a couple of years in Asia tho, he is a big time rice lover now.

Dawn being that you mentioned sandy soil when earlier in this thread I took a few pictures of a shovel of my garden soil on the edge Sat. and then some I have never added anything too. The soil was real wet. I have posted the pictures on Photobucket so will add the link. You can easily see the difference in the two. And both were after we had all the rain last week. Although wet not like your clay for sure. Jay

You're mean! And I am afraid to ask if a ground hog supper actually does feature ground hogs. (We don't have them in our part of Oklahoma.) I can't imagine eating ground hogs....or prairie dogs....but then I don't eat squirrel or possum or rabbit either, and some folks do.

My dad worked with a gullible fellow like your co-worker, and Dad and his co-workers sure pulled a lot of pranks on that poor gentleman over the years....and he fell for those pranks every time.

One of our neighbors who lives up the road a couple of miles north of us had a couple of peacocks when we first moved here. (Well, he lived there until a couple of weeks ago, having just entered a nursing home.) I thought they were cool, and always saw at least one of them roaming the yards and roadside. (People who lived close to the peacocks said they are loud and dirty, but I still liked seeing them out roaming.)

We seem to have a lot of wild turkeys here most years. Lots and lots of kids here believe that Thanksgiving turkeys do NOT come from the grocery store--they come from the fields and pastures/edges of woodlands. Many years the local papers run little essays written by the schoolkids that describe "How To Make Thanksgiving Dinner". A surprisingly number of them (especially the ones by the younger kids) start out like this..."First, Daddy shoots the turkey....".

Your improved garden soil looks great, and (wow!) you have really, really, really sandy soil. Mine, of course, is as different from yours as it can be. I'm still kind of in shock that you've had enough moisture to actually give you wet soil though. : )

We're up to almost 47" of rain at our house for 2009, which sure beats last year's 23", but I am so tired of the wet soil, mud and puddles. When the ground is this wet, the wet, unimproved clay becomes about the consistency of pudding! It is awful. Our improved soil drains better, but still holds too much moisture. Our annual average rainfall is about 38", but we seldom actually have rainfall anywhere close to it...our rain more often runs in the 20s in a dry year or the 40s in a wet one, but of course, that explains the average in the 30s.

It has been drizzly/misty here all night long, which won't add up to much in the rain gauge, but it adds to the general cold/wet misery. Our fire pagers went off around 4 a.m. for a wreck on the interstate. Apparently no one here can drive in rain because our firefighters have been paged out to a wreck or two several days a week since the rain started. I don't think any of those accidents have occurred in heavy rain....but they keep occurring in misty, drizzly stuff.

I AM starting to worry the garlic may rot if this non-stop moisture keeps up. We've had over 4.5" at our house in the last week. All the rain we prayed for during all of 2008 finally arrived in April 2009 and hasn't stopped falling since.

Dawn

I included the pictures as once you and someone else made a comment about my soil. I am blessed and in spite of a few blunders feel I have improved it and have very good soil. Even being wet it is hard to make a ball that won't fall apart. We are still below our average by almost 3 inches but if it keeps coming we may be close by the end of the year. Some like my sister are close to there now. The thing is 9 inches or more of ours has come since late July. And without all the trees ect like you have taking moisture from the soil it don't take as much and the sandy soil retrains it well. Jay

I am relieved a groundhog supper does not involve actual groundhogs.

I think it is great your rainfall is almost back to average, but that is not always a great comfort.

Here in our end of the state, it is very rare to have two rainy years back-to-back. So, when we are having a very rainy year here, the thought is always in the back of my mind that we'll probably go to the other extreme and be dry the following year. Of course, this winter's El Nino may indeed give us two consecutive wet years....and, if it does, I won't know what to do. Sadly, too much rain is just as hard on plants as too little.

I'm gad to hear that your soil retains water well, but if it keeps raining, you might have to start worrying about the soil being too wet.

Our clay holds water so well you can make pottery from it. Even the highly improved soil in our raised beds holds water too long. However, constant amending for over a decade has turned it from red clay to a brown clayey-loam, so I guess that is progress.

Dawn

When I was in high school my mother and I lived almost exactly where last years tornado took out the furniture store in Lone Grove. We had some neighbors living in a nearby rent house and the kids had a pet prairie dog. It was very friendly and everyone played with it. The people next door to them were friends of my mother and they didn't have a telephone, so my mother had told them that their family could call our house if they needed to talk to them. One day one of those calls came and I ran out of the house barefoot, across our yard, then got half way across the first yard and this prairie dog attacked me. He grabbed around my ankle with his paws and put his teeth in just a little higher. I was doing a one-legged dance all over the yard and that little bugger just didn't want to let go. I screamed loud enough that the kids inside the house heard me and came to my rescue. I still have a slight scar from the teeth marks and I can still feel the indention in my leg. I must tell you that I got teased so much...."anyone can get a dog bite, but only Carol gets it from a "prairie" dog". Everytime I hear that song about the squirrel in Church, I can relate.

Beth

My 3 kids and I just loved going out to the garden every day this summer and finding more goodies!! There is so much more veggies that I want to try like broccoli. Tonight I made broccoli/cheese soup with frozen broccoli. As I was cooking I was thinking how great it would be if I would've had home grown broccoli to use.

I tried romaine lettuce for my fall garden, but it didn't do so well. I went out today and even though it's only about 6" tall, it's already starting to bolt. I haven't grown lettuce before so I don't know if this is normal. I thought that if I cut some of the outer leaves it would grow more?!

Fall-planted garlic will be ready to harvest in late spring to early summer. You'll know it is ready when the green foliage begins turning a yellowish-brown.

Once lettuce is bolting, it is done and the leaves will have a bitter flavor. The bitter flavor is a protective device--by turning bitter, the leaves ensure they will not be eaten and that the seed will have time to mature and, ultimately, reseed to give birth to the next generation. This abnormally cloudy, cool and wet autumn has been hard on the fall plants. Normally lettuce does well in fall. Hopefully next fall will be better.

Dawn

I got all Jay's garlic planted about a month after it arrived. They were beautiful and I had a lot of fun researching them. I usually just buy garlic bulbs at the grocery store and plant them, so these will be a real treat. I can hardly wait! I had planned to put them immediately into the ground but my appendix had other plans for me. They are the beginnings of my garden that I'm starting in the front yard. I thought I might use that area for things that grow under the ground and for herbs like fennel and dill, so as not to encourage people who would harvest from my garden while I sleep. I hope that spot is not going to be too wet for the garlic. They are already up, and I will be mulching them soon.

Shame on all of you for making fun of an old lady! LOL! Seriously though, those off-road crocs are the most comfortable shoes I ever had. I have plantar faciitis in both feet and there are times when I can barely hobble around. I've had it for years, treatment has not helped all that much and I don't want to have surgery because I've known some people who were worse off after surgery. When your feet go, so does your mobility. Regular crocs are ok and I started out with knock-off crocs and lucked into a pair that was flexible but sturdy. Wore those for years. They were no longer available when I needed to replace them, and the ones at WMT were too stiff and thin on the bottom. So I bit the bullet and paid for these off-road ones and they were worth it. One good thing about them is that if you step in a puddle you don't get water on your sock. I will not wear Crocs without socks because I don't like the feeling of my skin sticking to the inside of the shoe. For that reason I'm not a sandal wearer. An added problem is that when I walk in Crocs without sox, they talk! LOL! Since they sound like Whoopie Cushions when they talk, that's enough to make me grab socks right there.

Of course, as I'm an avid garage sale junkie, I found two more pair of regular crocs for $1 each. An orange pair and a black pair with rhinestones embedded in them. I wear the orange pair when I wear my tye-dyed T-shirt, which is usually on garage-sale day. I have not worn the rhinestone ones yet. I guess I must be saving them for a special occasion. LOL!

All the talk about ground hogs and things reminded me of a joke I heard years and years ago about a frenchman who became a farmhand. They worked all day one day with the hogs, and when he asked the cook what they were having for supper, she said "hog fries". The next day, they did the calves, and they had calf fries that night for supper. After supper that day, the frenchman asked the cook what she was going to fix for the next day. She said, "french fries", and he packed up his stuff and left, never to be seen again.

And for the record, I was serious about getting me some good gardening shoes :-)

Jay, I'm going to remember the 1/3 leaves thing. Good tip thanks.

I have spent all week double digging for the raised beds in the new garden location (didn't like our trial area out front this year). DH cut up some of the scrap wood we've got laying around and now I haveraised planter frames: 3 4X4 and 1 4X8 each about 12-14 inches tall and all set up around the dug areas. I'm taking a break until Tues when DH is home again...then we'll be doing 4 more :-) I'm so happy I'm getting my raised beds.

We live on a piece of property that is the low point of the area...the water from everywhere literally runs into our front yard and floods it, proceeds under our house (which is a mobile) and floods the back yard. Our back yard finally dried out around June this year. We do have a slope on the side of the yard though and that is where we're putting the new garden. Half of it will get afternoon shade in the summer because the house casts a shadow there and the drainage is much better over there. The soil does need more amending than other areas of the property but I figure I'd rather amend more than deal with mud. So I added a couple inch layer of compost on my new beds and planted cover crop. I figure next spring I can add more compost and plant.

My brother will be coming next week to put in the fence around the garden for me because I've learned the hard way that I have absolutely no talent for running fence lol. Once it's in I'll ready the area along the fence for beans and peas for next year. Figure I'll run some clover along that as a cover crop too. I'm lining the fence line(on the outside of the fence) with roof shingles so I can mow right up to it without having to weedeat all the time, plus I hope it'll keep the grass from taking over my beans. I really fight the grass just like the rest of y'all.

Hey, I have a question for you all: We have the rest of the 2.5 acres that is a giant field but it's filled with all kinds of weeds and woody grass mixed in with the grass. I want to use the grass from the fields next spring and summer for my compost bins and as mulch but I don't want all those weeds to enter into my garden goods. I'm looking for ideas for getting rid of those weeds to where it's almost all grass and no weed. I've been told to get goats who prefer brambly stuff to grass but I don't have a structure or anything for them and don't know if I want to go that route right yet...someone else told me to brush hog it down this fall and plant buckwheat. I don't know. Ideas?

We are not making fun of you. We are seriously envious of your bee costume and off-road crocs. I'm thinking of getting some of those crocs.

Rhinestone crocs? Well, aren't you getting fancy now. Exactly what special occasion do you suppose would call for off-road crocs? When my cousin's daughter got married about 8 years ago, she wore flip flop sandals down the aisle with her wedding gown (and it was a church wedding, too, not a beach wedding). She wanted to be comfortable and also express the silly side of her personality, and she did. I don't even think her flip-flops had rhinestones either, although it would have been a nice touch.

I love the french fry joke. That was precious and I am going to have to remember to repeat that one to my family.

Mandy,

That's exciting news about the raised beds. With all the rain forecast for fall/winter, you'll be glad this spring that you have raised beds which will drain more quickly than the surrounding grade level soil.

On the 2.5 acres of mixed grass/weeds in your pasture, I have mixed feelings about what to tell you, so I'll just tell you what we have found and you can figure out if any of it applies to you.

Our pastures are a mix of native prairie grasses and forbs (that's wildflowers, etc.--anything that is non-grassy). At some point in the past, the people who owned this place back when it was a farm also planted bermuda grass. As long as we don't mow, we have lovely pastures full of native grasses and wildflowers that support a huge variety of wild things, including butterflies and moths, green lacewings (very beneficial for the garden), dragonflies/damselflies (especially in the wetter areas), rabbits, and all sorts of other wild critters, some of them, like grasshoppers, being undesirable.

For the first couple of years, we tried to keep all the pastures mowed all the time but when we did that, the bermuda grass began to grow and spread and take over. The last thing on earth we wanted to have was more bermuda grass, so we mostly stopped mowing the pastures. If we had kept the pastures mowed all the time, we would have ended up with nothing but bermuda grass which does not support the wildlife like the mixed prairie grasses/forbs do. Instead, we mow 8' wide pathways through the pastures so we can walk through them without (hopefully) stepping on snakes.

We do mow everything down short once or twice a year, but try to do it after the wildflowers have matured seed so we'll have lots of wildflowers the next year. So, that generally means one big mowing job in June and one in November.

So, if you have bermuda grass mixed in with your pastures be aware that consistent mowing gets rid of the native prairie plants and lets the bermuda thrive.

When we cut the pasture grasses, I put them in the compost pile and compost them. As long as they are completely composted, the heat from the decomposition process destroys the seeds. When we cut the 'lawn' part of our landscape, I put those clippings right into my garden beds as mulch.

Depending on what you have in your pastures, regular mowing may be all you have to do. You should be aware that if you plow up those pastures to plant a cover crop, you will be exposing billions of weed seeds to light which will cause them to germinate next spring when the temperatures reach the right range and then you'll be fighting more broadleaf weeds than ever (although many of those 'weeds' are actually the wildflowers that support the wildlife population).

Also, our pasture maintenance depends on the weather. We are surrounded by thousands of acres of grasslands with mixed oak forests and wildfire is a huge issue here almost every winter. So, if it is a drought year and wildfire is a problem, we do mow the grass down short to reduce the fire risk. In a bad fire year, we also plant winter rye grass on the couple of acres that surround the house, barn/garage, sheds, garden, lawn area, flowers beds and dog yard. That green grass gives us a buffer zone that is less likely to burn in a bad fire year, and since rye grass grows fast and requires constant mowing, it gives me tons of green grass clippings to mix in with the leaves that go onto the compost pile all winter which is great for the compost pile because the decomposing grass clippings and leaves keep it 'hot' in the cold months. (I can collect leaves endlessly from our roughly 10 acres of woodland, as long as I do it in winter when the snakes are not out and about.)

I wasn't as happy with our pastures when we kept them mowed down. It definitely reduced the population of butterflies, moths, and other desirable insects like green lacewings. I also love having beautiful wildflowers in bloom from late January through November. That's just what I like, and you may prefer nothing but grass. However, out in the country where seeds are carried everywhere by rain and wind, it is almost impossible to maintain a weed-free pasture unless you mow every couple of weeks and regularly use a broadleaf herbicide and a pre-emergent herbicide. Because we'd rather not use those chemicals, we have mostly left our pastures in their natural state.

Just some food for thought. It also is a little late to be planting cover crops since the colder weather is very close now. September or early October would have been better so they could become established before a frost arrived. If it stays very wet, it is hard to get good germination in colder weather.

Dawn

I wish my fields were full of beautiful wildflowers and such. And, for the record, I'm not a total fan of the "grass only" field. My problem is when we do mow down right now, there's no grass amidst these woody stick things (I don't really know what they are exactly). There's huge patches of this stuff--pretty much wherever the heavy trucks and machinery wrecked the ground when they did the septic this last Jan/Feb. Also, we have these huge light yellow/white silk filled weeds that I'm terribly allergic to. They give me an asthma attack. I need to get someone to brush hog the area and find something to smother some of this stuff back. At this point I CAN'T mow without an inhaler and a lot of breaks. If I can get this place to where there's a reasonable amount of grass and some of the other I would be okay but right now we've got a field that's approx 60 percent wood sticks and silk asthma inducer. I've got to change it. I was thinking that when I get this all under control I'd like to sprinkle some susans all over the grass...I love the way they look in a field :-) and I hear they grow pretty well out here. I'd love all the benefits of the good insect influx too.

Maybe I should plant rye grass out there? If it grows fast maybe it would help by shading some of the weeds and stunt their growth?

I've also thought about sprinkling some of the left over clover out there too.

I don't honestly know if our grass is bermuda or not (or if some of it is). This was an old homestead in the 1890's but since then it's pretty much sat as fallow land. My brother was caretaker of it for the last 6 years before I purchased it so I know through him that nothing's been done with this section of the property in at least that long. He mowed it down 2-3 times a year and ran fence on it. Other than that it's just sat here. I can say this about the roots though...they go down almost a shovel's length! It's a mess to try to dig around here lol.

We don't do chemicals if we don't have too. My four year old has a weakened immune system and it's not good to have all that stuff around his home...well, it's not really good for any of us. We do all organic and heirloom gardening.

Appreciate the help. I'll think on it some more.

Mandy

Lazy susans are pretty but be aware they're really, really invasive. My neighbors two yards over had a small planting of them, maybe only 3' across, and I fought those d*!@ things for several years after that in my herb garden. Either carried over by the birds or the wind, I never knew for sure. Something that would be neat out there would be purple cone flower (echinacea). Its natural habitat is the meadow, around here, along with yarrow. Or maybe think bigger and plant sunflowers. The birds love the seed and if you can harvest it before they do, you can boil them in salt water and then dry them and have sunflower seed to munch on all winter.

Dawn, my orange crocs and the ones with rhinestones on them are not the off-road variety. They're just regular crocs. I'd heard that about girls wearing flip-flops with their prom dresses, although I don't know how anyone could dance in those. But then, you can't dance in crocs, either, I've tried. I guess they'd kick them off then. It was a whole big fad, and yes, they bought flip-flops with rhinestones, sequins, etc. There's no accounting for fads. When I was a girl, it was go-go boots and those purses that looked like little suitcases for awhile.

Jay, you're my kinda guy! LOL! I'm not too crazy about auctions because I'm a type A person and I don't like to wait. It's really frustrating for me to have to sit through an auction waiting for something to come up for bids that I've seen and decided I wanted, only to be out-bid by somebody else. Or to bid on and win something that I didn't get to examine beforehand, only to find out it's damaged in some way. So garage and yard sales do it for me. It burns more gas, but I get to visit with lots of different people that way and I enjoy that. Plus you get to know the other "regular" garage salers and we act like old friends when we run into each other at a sale.

Jay, I've never been to an auction, but I've heard that I would need to do my homework before going so I didn't overpay. They sound like fun.

My DH says to just put out a wildflower mix in the field when we're ready for that, that way there's a variety. I'm okay with that if that's what he wants so that's what we'll probably do. I just like flowers :-) Maybe I'll put some susans in a pot upwind? Hhmmm...I usually stay away from the invasives...

Have a neighbor across the street who may be willing to bring her goats over to clear the area that way I wouldn't have to put up a shelter or buy any. Just put out water for them and she'll take care of the rest. Sounds like a deal to me. Then I'm thinking I'll plant some rye grass in the empty spots and add wildflowers...what do you all think?

Prescribed burning is regulated by the state and you have to abide by those regulations. Some counties enforce the law and ticket you if you do a so-called 'controlled burn' on your property without jumping through all the hoops the laws demand, and some counties don't. Most cities do not allow prescribed burns inside their city limits. Prescribed burning is great if done properly and if all the rules are followed and the fire is not allowed to escape. However, if the fire escapes from your property, you are financially liable for all damage done to anyone else's property. Sadly, a lot of the grass fires and wild fires here last year (and in some previous years) were from prescribed burns (and in some of those prescribed burns they did have permits and obey all the laws, and then the temps and humidity and windspeed changed dramatically and they lost control of their so-called controlled burn).

When I was a kid in the 60s, I had go-go boots too because I wanted to dress like the "big girls" i.e. the teenagers who lived next door.

Mandy, Great wildflower mixes are available from several companies. I've linked my favorite one below. By the way, some wildflowers (Indian Paintbrush is one) have a sybiotic relationship with native grasses, so they won't grow without them which is why wildflowers do best mixed in with native grasses.

Dawm

You're welcome. I love the wildflowers and one of the first thing Tim learned here when he tried to mow the pastures was that he had to mow 'around' the wildflowers and not cut them down until after they had set seed. To tell you the truth, you couldn't mow that much until at least June because you had to give the flowers that bloom in March-May time to ripen seed for the next year. That's partially how we ended up with a twice a year mowing schedule for the pastures. And, timing is everything. You have to catch the pastures after the early bloomers (like the bluebonnets, poppies,spring beauties, and paintbrush) have matured their seed, and before the later summer bloomers (all different kinds, but including black-eyed susans, liatris, goldenthread daisies, goldenrods and more) get too tall. So, why mow? Some years we don't mow at all until fall except for the wide snake-proof pathways. We get the best wildflowers with little to no mowing because they reseed better if allowed to totally dry out.

In a good year, you can have wildflowers in bloom at least 10 months of the year, although not all of them are big and showy. When teeny-tiny wildflowers are blooming in December and January, they are buried under a ton of those little native honeybees because so few other plants are in bloom at that time.

Dawn