Last winter I winter-sowed a lot of forb seeds in flats and got a good germination rate. Some the transplants died during the summer heat but I have quite a few in pots to plant out next spring. I will do some more this year.

For grasses I plan to start with three that are native to this area and supposed to be suitable for the soil and moisture. I don't want the very tallest ones so I have chosen Little bluestem, Prairie dropseed (Sprobolus heterolepsis) and Bottlebrush (Elymus hystrix/Hystrix patula).

This year I laid out a teardrop shaped area that covers approximately 1000 square feet in my backyard. This is zone 6, full sun, mesic in spring to dry in summer. It's Virginia clay soil and a neighbor enlightened me to why I was hitting a near impenetrable layer about 8 inches down in places – an old railway bed ran through there years back.

This year I killed the grass with glyphosate herbicide and have repeated applications every month or so. Used a broadfork to break up the soil to about 12 inches. It has received most of this year's compost and fresh yard waste. By happy chance our town changed trash pickup rules and my neighbors have been bringing me grass clippings all season. It looks like I will have a good 4 or 5 inches of compost when I rake it out. I will need to do a couple of applications of herbicide in the spring before I plant. I have some awful perennial weeds to get under control. By the time I could direct sow grasses it will be getting too hot and dry here.

I would like to have some established plugs of the three grasses to sow next spring along with the forb plants. I then thought I would wait until fall and sow some more seeds to flesh it out. I got some great plugs of ceanothus and asarum from Ion Exchange last year. They do sell plugs of grasses or I could try buying seeds now and winter-sowing them in plug trays.

Do you think I should buy plugs?
Start my own plugs?
Wait all the way until next fall and direct sow the grasses?
How much of each kind of grass seed should I buy?

I know this is long and rambling but I would appreciate your advice.

Susan Hagen

It sounds like your soil preparation has been thorough. I think you should be careful about additional earth-turning and compost applications from now on. You might end up adding (or unearthing) more weed seeds. Just let the area settle in, let the compost decompose, and whack your perennial weeds when they appear next year.

Depending on how many grass and forb plugs you have, you might want to over-seed your planting area (with both grass and forb seeds) next fall/winter to fill in around your plugs.

One more question, how much of each of the grass seed should I buy? I didn't quite understand some of the websites info on coverage.

Does a half-pound of little bluestem and a couple of ounces of the others sound right?

Thanks,

Bottlebrush grass is not suitable for a full sun prairie. It is a woodkland grass. I don't know what other grasses are native to your area but shorter grasses suitable for a prairie include side oats gramma, switch grass, virginia rye and Canada Wild Rye.

indian grass can be a nice addition. maybe a plug or 5 would be a nice addition. it doesnt get too tall that u cannot stand it.

prairie brome is a handsome plant. it grows well from seed. its short and cute in a fluffy,furry sort of way.

im fond of LBS and prairie drop seed. i could roll around in those two all day and night.

another neat grass is porcupine grass but read up on it before u plant it or ull take ur eye out.

switchgrass is a hadsome plant also. but if u dont like the aggressive nature of it, there is a horticulture variety called 'Shenandoah' its a smallish non-fertile type that has a bright red fall color.

froggy