Rewilding My Lot

Around the perimeter of the back garden is a mixture of three short native grasses: Curly Mesquite (Hilaria belangeri), Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis), and Buffalograss (Bouteloua dactyloides). Collectively, this collection is sold as Thunder Turf seed mix.

Toward the back of the garden is a small area designated for taller prairie grasses: Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans), Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium), Gulf Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris), Sideoats Grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), and Purple Threeawn (Aristida purpurea). The Purple Threeawn is the newest addition (I sowed seed last fall) and I don’t know if any of that is growing yet. There are plenty of new grass seedlings emerging in that area, but it’s too early to identify them. The other grasses produced plenty of seed themselves, so I hope there is a mixture growing.

The photo below shows the short Thunder Turf on the right and taller prairie grasses on the left.

There is an odd situation with the Little Bluestem. There were four clumps that had been growing successfully since they were planted in fall 2023. However, none of those four clumps has shown any new growth yet this year and it’s already May. I’ve seen new growth of Little Bluestem grasses in other venues, and in my small collection of grasses Little Bluestem is the only one not growing. I’ve gently pulled out old growth from the clumps to see if anything is growing from the roots, but I see nothing.

It is possible that the Little Bluestem roots are still viable so I have not removed the old clumps. However, I started immediately with a backup plan because I really do want this grass in my garden. I bought six small plugs from Pollinatives and with unintentional masterful timing, planted them just before a major rain event at the end of April. All six are growing well.

As a side note, I really appreciate the nursery offering plugs of plants — they are inexpensive and their small size makes them easy to plant in my stony ground. I also have a suspicion that they may establish more quickly than plants in larger pots.

Around the same time, these are some other maintenance tasks that I did in the prairie grass area:

• Weeding. Over the winter, bare areas had become occupied with volunteer forbs, seeded from other plants in the garden. I waited until after a rainfall when the ground was soft and pulled out many of these. However, I have to be gentle because I don’t want to pull up new grass seedlings. The main priority was to remove (or cut down) things that were blooming so that they don’t make further seed. Further weeding will be an ongoing project.
• Trimming of old grass seed heads and stems. I had left old seed heads over the winter so that they would be a source of food for birds. At the beginning of May I cut these into small pieces and spread them in the same area. I would welcome more germination of those seeds, but otherwise they may function as food for ground-foraging creatures.
• “Combing” of grass clumps. With my fingers, I gently raked out dead grass leaves from the bigger clumps (Indiangrass, Gulf Muhly). These had been left over the winter as habitat, but now is the time to clear away old growth to let light and air into the center of the clumps.

Here’s a photo of the two biggest clumps of Indiangrass.

Apart from the four aforementioned lifeless Little Bluestem clumps, the other grasses in this area look healthy and are putting out new growth. There are also several small clumps of Curly Mesquite grass that have migrated from the nearby Thunder Turf area. They aren’t in the long-term plan, but they are native grasses and currently serve to fill in bare spots so I have left most of them in place. Here’s one: