Category Archives: Horticulture

It’s been raining pretty much full-time for three days now, sometimes lightly, often steadily, and occasionally with a vengeance. Once or twice there’s been a smattering of hail. And it’s not about to stop; forecasts give it another three or four days before there’s even a hint of sun. I know this is the rainy time of year around here; and I know it’s good for the land, the farmers, etc. etc., but at times I find myself thinking, Enough, already!

Last week we had a couple of glorious days when temperatures were in the high seventies. Lovely! Now, along with endless rain, we have chilly weather: highs in the fifties, lows in the thirties and forties. (All Fahrenheit, of course.) It’s the end of May; I long for warm weather.

Still, living for the first time in a dry land, I cannot forget the value of water. Some seasons I check the rain index on the back of the newspaper’s first section every day, comparing what’s fallen this month to the month’s norm, then looking at the numbers for the year, what’s fallen and what’s normal. That’s four numbers for Bozeman. Then I check the numbers for Belgrade, fifteen miles west. Fifteen miles away and about five inches drier, because it’s out in the wide valley, while we’re tucked right up against the foothills of the Bridger mountains, where the clouds dump their loads of moisture before rising over the peaks and moving east.

Like much of the west throughout North America, we’ve had years of drought. My little corner has been luckier than most, but the threat of drought is still real. We watch the precipitation levels, and the river-flow levels, and we watch the snow-pack, because the snow-pack feeds the rivers, and the rivers feed the land, and the land feeds us.

If the snow-pack is low, that means a dry year. If a surge of hot weather comes early and melts the snow too quickly, that means floods. If the hot weather holds, melting the entire snow-pack by the end of June, that means floods and a dry year.

Winter banks our summer’s water in the snow-pack; we need a slow, frugal spring, releasing that wealth gradually. If it rushes from the mountains, it is gone, like money flung to the winds.

So I cannot entirely begrudge the rain, and the cold, which I know means that what falls as rain here falls as snow higher up.

Then too, when the clouds part and the mountains come briefly into view, streaked with white nearly to their knees, that’s a loveliness not to be disputed or denied.

Having spent most of the past six months researching and writing about this topic (and yesterday writing about one aspect of it), I’m gearing up to put all my new theoretical knowledge into practice. One thing is sure: if it works on my lawn, it’ll work anywhere.

Indeed, if you saw my lawn, you’d probably look elsewhere for advice on caring for yours. In my defense, let me say that neither lawn nor garden (nor house, for that matter) had received any care from the previous owner, one of Bozeman’s many avid outdoor folk who used the house to sleep in, but who for all intents and purposes lived outside–not in his back yard, but in the mountains nearby.

So for the twenty odd years of his tenure, the grass that was here got mown, but that was about it. And truth to tell, it hasn’t gotten much more from us in the seven years we’ve lived here. I did undertake one major task, digging the creeping bell-flower roots out of one section of lawn, but that is definitely a post unto itself.

This spring, I’ve been weeding sporadically, trying to get things cleaned up enough to start the sequence laid out so neatly in the article I’ve been working on: weed, aerate, amend, overseed. (If my amendments are good enough, I may not fertilize till fall.) I’ve never aerated, and I’m dying to see what transformative effects it will have. I’ve gotten a seed mix from a local greenhouse, their low-water use mixture of native fescues, which should do well in our largely shady yard. This is the year—this is when it will happen—this is it, I’m sure.

If it ever stops raining.

I’m driven to write this because I saw something recently advising anyone trying to grow grass in the shade to use sod, not seeds. But the right seed mix will overcome most seeding problems, even in the shade.

The problem with sod, in the north, at least, is that very few types of grass are available, so if people are looking for sod in the north, they’ll all too often end up with Kentucky Bluegrass. Kentucky blue is a lousy choice anywhere in the western US or Canada because it requires a lot of water, and a poor choice for shade, because it requires a lot of sun. (More on the water issue in upcoming posts.)

A couple of companies (see below) have recently developed seed mixes specifically for northerners, consisting of several different fine-bladed fescues. These grasses, developed from natives that grow well in shade, put down deep roots (for grass), which makes them extremely drought-resistant. They grow more slowly in summer (needing less mowing) than in spring or fall, and top out at about eight inches, so in some places it’s not necessary to mow at all. Fescue mixes are therefore ideal for lawns in the north, in the west, or in any cooler area where water-use is an issue–which means just about everywhere, these days.

Establishing such grasses certainly takes longer than establishing sod or even than growing Kentucky bluegrass from seed. KB has rhizomes, shoots that extend outwards from the roots and start new plants. Most fescues are bunch grasses which propagate through seeds (and seeds never develop on most lawns) or through tillers, new shoots that grow up on the outside of already established plants, extending their size.

Since fescues sprout more slowly than some other grasses, weeds have an excellent opportunity to move in and take over. This is one of the reasons many people advise against seeding lawns with fescue, especially in shady areas, since shade will slow growth even more.

The solution is to include an annual ryegrass in the seed mix. The rye-grass sprouts quickly and will help hold the fort till the fescues establish themselves, then dies off in the fall, leaving the field (or fort) to the fescues.

I haven’t tried seed from either of these companies, so please don’t take this as an endorsement!  They’re just the two I happened to encounter in the course of my research.

Bluestem Nursery Enviroturf
http://www.bluestem.ca/enviroturf.htm

Wildflower Farm EcoTurf
www.wildflowerfarm.com/index.php?p=catalog&parent=4&pg=1#Drought