Growing grass

And here I was beginning to think I was nuts for hoarding my used nursery pots! This past weekend I potted up some native grass seedlings. Hah - "some". That's almost fifty pots of big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtopendula), and prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepsis). You would think I'm trying to start a nursery or something.

If I do manage to grow them up into big grass clumps, I would like to give most of them to my local garden club for use in their plantings around the town, or to sell at a plant sale. I've been looking forward all summer to meeting up with them.

I suppose I should mention how I started the grass seeds: early in the summer I set up two enclosed milk jugs of each variety, winter-sowing style, and one open pot as a control. In all cases, the milk jugs did better because, I suspect, the soil surface stayed moist. The dropseed seemed a bit hesitant to germinate.

I also tried to start more pussytoes the same way. Although I got some germination, the seedlings all promptly fried in the brutal heat. I'm actually surprised that the grasses did so well.