Grass Mystery

I thought I had planted two species of Bouteloua: Buffalo grass and Blue Grama grass on my berms. Both of these are short (6” or so) warm season native prairie grasses. The seed heads of these plants are quite distinctive (right). What came up and has seeded is a wheat, 12-18" tall (shown left). After considerable Email discussion with both seed vendors (they came from different sources) I came to the conclusion that what I see came from seed in the straw that I used as mulch, and the two seeds that I planted have not germinated (yet, I hope).One of the vendors suggested that I mow the wheat grass down to about 6”. This will provide more mulch, will let the sun get closer to the desired seed, and will reduce the seed from the less-desirable wheat grass.

So this morning I ‘tested’ the new string trimmer that I bought for the community. It is electric, well-balanced, and proved suitable for this task. It took me a while to learn how to avoid the plants I want to keep, such as the poplar seedlings and the sunflowers, but worked well for the most part. The wheat had begun to set seed, and I cut off most of the seed heads.