My Emerald Waves of Grain

Sometimes a good idea turns into a great one.

Last fall, I was checking out at the feed & seed store. Saw a sack of seed under a hand-scrawled sign. “Rye. Great winter cover.”

From a distance I assumed it was some kind of ryegrass. Moving closer, I grabbed a handful. As a baker and brewer, I’ve had enough food grain in my hands over the years to recognize it. It wasn’t turfgrass seed, it was rye – Secale cereale, the grain used to make bread and whiskey.

“You guys sell rye?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

“Oh yeah. Folks love it in their gardens. You let it grow all winter then plow it under in the spring,” came the store guy’s response.

Wheels turned. I’m thinking harvest, not cover. Bread, beer, who knows?

“When do you plant it?” I asked.

“Right now,” he said. 

I grabbed two pounds. I had visions of using it to create a no-mow strip right in the middle of the front yard. But since we’d never grown it before and had no idea what to expect, the Mrs. was less than enthusiastic about that plan. So I opted for the spot that I knew couldn’t possibly get any worse: the backyard desert.

My backyard has a strip of bone-dry death, about 150 feet long and 10 feet wide. Next to nothing grows there. Not even crabgrass. About all that could get footing in that spot was the occasional broom sedge and wild lettuce. Mostly it was just hard, ugly, barren dirt – a haven for burrowing wasps. 

I scattered the rye there, expecting zilch. After all, I had scattered grass seed there for years, eventually giving up on it as nothing after nothing took root.

I irrigated on and off – not as much as I should have. Fortunately we had a decent amount of rain that fall. And within weeks, this barren scar of sterile desert was greening up. I could scarcely believe my own eyes.

I’ve since learned that rye is a great thing to plant in bad soil. It has fairly strong roots that break up compacted soil. When the annual stalks die off, the roots and straw add biomass to the soil. It does better in crappy conditions than its cousins, barley and wheat. And farmers use it as a natural weed control, since discourages weeds from getting a foothold. It’s also remarkably resistant to pests and diseases. No wonder grain grasses like wheat, barley and rye formed the backbone of human civilization. They’ll thrive just about anywhere. 

By Thanksgiving, it was lush and green, maybe six or eight inches tall. It stayed that way all winter. Frost and snow didn’t seem to bother it. Come spring, it was off to the races. The stuff grew like weeds – from inches to feet in just a few weeks. It really dressed up that formerly arid strip of yard, spawning a small meadow of green. (I challenge anybody to sit near it on a breezy day and not find meditative calm in the sight and sound of the gently swaying fronds.)

Then, it did what rye does: form heads. Holy cow! I might even get my harvest out of it. In hindsight, my reaction was kind of silly. What did I expect it to do? It’s rye, for Pete’s sake! 

I don’t know. I guess I had no expectations – so every little advance felt like a miracle. 

And it was.

Why didn't I think of this sooner?

Well, to be fair, I thought of it. Just never acted on it.

One reason I dreaded the annual compost top dress was how tedious just getting the compost is. (Not to mention days of manual labor moving it around.) I'd been driving to the county dump with my little Jeep-towed trailer, buying it a yard at a time. Getting just one load rarely takes less than 45 minutes. A half hour if all the stars align.

This yard is way too big. It needs around 15 yards of compost for the annual top dress. That probably cost me 10 hours or more, just driving back and forth to the dump and waiting my turn.

I'd always wondered about delivery but never inquired until this year. The price per yard is the same, with a 20-yard minimum and a $50 delivery charge. Sign me up!

It arrived. In a big way. Gotta go. I've got some compost spreading to do.

Spring Report (early)

Spring sprung rather early this year. Well, technically, it didn't really 'spring' at all, as we didn't have much of a winter.

And this year is do or die. Year three of Tukey's three-year plan. If the lawn turns to proverbial excrement this summer, it's going to be serious soul-searching time.

I am cautiously optimistic. First, the clover has never looked better. I am fairly confident this is related to the 2011-12 non-winter. Normally the snow and ice does a number on it. It rarely comes up this strong in spring (and I can't reseed this time of year since I'm also spreading pre-emergent to discourage the crabgrass seeds from germinating.) But this year it's thick and lush, at least in some spots.

Second, I bit the bullet and had the 'builder's grade' irrigation system repaired. No offense meant if you're a builder. But our builder's sprinkler contractor was a team of Keystone Kops Knuckleheads. They didn't bother to review the property plan – simply guessing where the borders were. They installed the wrong kind of head nozzles. And they did not optimize the well pump for irrigation. Nice work, guys.

The result - desert-dry swaths throughout the property. So, this year, I've finally corrected all those blunders. Even though an organic lawn requires way less water than a chemical one - it needs some. All those bone-dry, drought-prone swaths grew mainly crabgrass and black medick, no matter how often I watered. We'll see how they do this year.

Stay tuned.

Good news, bad news (but mostly good)

What the whole yard should look like.

Summer number two is behind us. I have to admit, by mid-August I was pretty ticked off about the whole thing and ready to throw in the towel. Now that cooler weather (and heads) have prevailed, I can give you a more accurate account of what's going on out there.

First the bad news. The crabgrass had its way with the lawn for most of the summer. (In spite of my corn meal gluten vigilance.) The black medick went a little nuts, too - most likely a product of my crappy builder's-grade sprinkler system. Black medick likes dry and we have plenty of that. The pinheads who installed the sprinkler system didn't give us enough heads so there are great swaths of lawn untouched by water, no matter how long I run the sprinklers. A fix for another day.

That's about it. Not too terrible.

The good news: the good grass made a strong comeback once the weather cooled and the crabgrass died off; the dandelions are much fewer in number than in previous years; and the clover patches are doing really well.

The magical fall comeback

I didn't post all summer for one reason. I was ticked off.

Spring wasn’t too bad. The dandelions were less numerous this year and the crabgrass seemed more manageable.

Then midsummer came along. Hot, dry, hotter and drier. Did I mention it was hot and dry?

Attempting to avoid a repeat of 2010, I had a mid-summer application of corn gluten meal ready to go. Before the crabgrass took over the neighbor’s lawns, I had it down. Thought I'd nipped it in the bud.

I was wrong. I might have well flushed $100 down the commode, or so I thought. The crabgrass spread like Britney Spears Twitter gossip, in spite of my corn gluten vigilance.

It was a dark moment in my organic lawn journey. After 24 months of toil, way too much money and countless weekends lost to lawn labor ... my lawn looked about the same as it did when the chemical squad was spraying and salting my yard with nasty herbicides, insecticides and other miscellaneous life-icides.

I'll be perfectly honest, I was ready to throw in the towel in this folly of an organic lawn experiment and buy some big-ass bags of cheap-ass chemical weed-&-feed for spring.

Just thinking about the lawn put me in a dark mood. I harbored fantasies of to sending Tukey email to give him a piece of my mind and calling Mike McGrath on his radio show to yell at him.

Of course, I wouldn’t do either of those things, no matter how angry I got. First, my mom didn’t raise any pinheads and second, it’s a lawn, for God’s sake. It’s not the kind of thing that warrants that kind of emotional expenditure.

So I stewed and plotted. I had a compromise planned. Come spring, I’ll go to the turf warehouse and by some straight pre-emergent, without herbicide. Maybe that way I could get a jump on the crabgrass without killing the clover I’d so carefully encouraged for the past two years. At least the crabgrass was green, albeit the wrong green.

Then something uncanny happened. By August, when the hottest part of summer was over, the lawn transformed itself. As the crabgrass died off, new growth of good grass and clover replaced it. Little by little, the days grew shorter, the nights grew cooler – and the lawn got greener.

This is what a healthy lawn is supposed to do. But here’s the news flash: it had never happened here before. Any other year, the crabgrass took over all summer. When it died, come fall, it left a brown desert in its place. When the chem-squad was showing up every other month to spread poison, they were killing the soil. Dead soil, dead lawn – every fall, like clockwork.

As I was plotting revenge fantasies against Tukey and McGrath for leading me astray, watching the crabgrass race across the lawn, the roots of the good grass were feeding and growing below. As soon as Mother Nature took the crabgrass out of the picture, the lawn bounced back – like a champ.

That’s big. And unprecedented.

Sorry, Paul. Sorry, Mike. Sorry for doubting you. Sorry for muttering unkind things about you, under my breath. You guys are OK in my book. I'm glad I hung in there.

Thank God I never sent that e-mail.

Again with the corn gluten meal

Last year we were caught with our pants down. By Independence Day the crabgrass was going completely nuts in the yard.

Mid-season around here, there's a big bloom of newly germinated crabgrass. It's obvious thanks to the bright, kelly-green color. I think it's this guy, but not entirely sure. And it's everywhere. Every lawn, empty lot and roadside. I even pulled some from a discarded flowerpot yesterday.

My lawn is pretty diverse right now - all kinds of wonderful turf crops and herbs sprawling out there. The perfect cover to hide the new blades of crabgrass. I never even saw them.

But up the street - a blue-green carpet of chemical-induced monoculture. Not so diverse. And smack in the middle, a patch of bright green crabgrass. That was my sentinel moment. It's a few weeks early - thanks to an uncharacteristic heat wave last week, I suspect.

Back to the seed store. Fortunately they still had a few bags of meal. And on to the lawn. The weather cooperated perfectly. It started drizzling as I was spreading and rained nice and steady for several hours thereafter. Mother nature watered it in for me. Today's going to be dry - the perfect cycle for corn gluten activation. It won't kill what's already sprouted but at least it will put the cabash on any new seedlings.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Year Two: Diversity

I don't know if this is wrong, right or "other." But it looks beautiful to me.

At least four species in this one small patch of lawn: the fescue I planted and three soil-improving legumes. Midway through our year-two growing season, they are pumping nitrogen into the soil, so we don't have to.

• Rabbit's Foot Clover; Trifolium arvense
• White Clover; Trifolium repens
• Black Medick; Medicago lupulina

All "weeds" according to conventional market hype (and the neighbors). Fortunately, once you join the ranks of organic turf farmers, you no longer have to swallow market hype.

The neighbors? I placate them with free homemade beer. That salves their grumbling. :-)