Cheat Grass

Weather: We got rain on Monday and Tuesday morning, but temperatures stayed above freezing: indeed, they rose slightly in the night when it was raining. But since, morning temperatures have fallen to 32 or below for a short time between 5:15 am and 6:15 am.

The shrubs I transplanted that didn’t like the heat may be happier, but bedding plants aren’t ready for severe cold. So far they’ve all survived, but the wax begonias look a bit shrunken. I’m not sure how the warm soil seeds are doing that I planted last weekend, but the ones that like cold stratification may germinate.

Winds continue to develop in late morning as soon as temperatures begin to rise: the warmer the day, the sooner they form. The soil surface is dry a few hours after I water. I suspect the clouds I’ve seen are Monday’s rain being leached back into the atmosphere.

Last useful rain: 5/21. Week’s low: 30 degrees F. Week’s high: 82 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Dr. Huey rootstock, Austrian Copper, Persian yellow, wild pink, and hybrid roses, spirea peaked, yellow potentilla, pyracantha, snowball, silver lace vine, broad leaf yucca, Dutch iris, peonies, blue flax, snow-in-summer, Jupiter’s beard, golden spur columbine, purple salvia

What’s blooming beyond the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, sand willow, narrow leaf yucca, white tufted evening primrose, alfilerillo, tumble mustard, bindweed, green leaf five eyes, fern leaf globe mallow, fleabane, plains paper flowers, strap leaf aster, goat’s beard, native and common dandelions; June, needle, feather, rice, three awn, brome, and cheat grasses

What’s blooming in my yard: Wood and rugosa roses, cliff rose, beauty bush, skunk bush, chives, baptisia, Bath pinks, vinca, coral bells, pink evening primrose; pansies that wintered over

Bedding Plants: Wax begonia, nicotiana, sweet alyssum

What’s reviving/coming up: Datura, toothed spurge, goat’s heads

Tasks: Several men cut their hay. Onions are up in one market garden field.

Animal sightings: Chickadees, gecko, cabbage and monarch butterflies, heard crickets, harvester and small ants, earthworms

Weekly update: Grasses are flourishing this year: with the increased rain the stems have gotten taller and seed heads fuller. That’s all well and good on the prairie where the needle grass shimmers in the sun, but the Gramineae are less welcome in the garden.

Smooth brome grass has been a bane ever since some seeds blew in from some farmer’s hay field. Bromus inermis roots are tied to runners an inch or more below ground, that break when the tops are jerked too strongly. I’ve been using a spade to get under them.

It’s cheat grass cousin isn’t as hard to remove: Bromus tectorum roots are shallow stars that usually can be removed by inserting a chisel under them. The problem is the seeds drop and replant themselves in the disturbed soil even as I’m removing them.

Last summer I tried again to level the main flower bed by adding soil from elsewhere. Naturally, it had been broken up before I used it, so was fine grained. If it didn’t come with seeds, it collected them from the wind.

Cheat grass invaded every place I put down soil. It didn’t just settle in the open spaces between the daylilies I’d planted, but it cousined up to them, and rose between the leaves of the Hemerocallis. Sometimes all I can do is break off the stems and leave the roots, which is OK since it is an annual.

Brome grass is a perennial, and its seeds too were stopped by the daylily leaves. One can’t dig them out without disturbing the perennial. Sometimes the chisel will get between them and the desirable plant and remove some of the root. The runners, however, sometimes go under the existing plants to come up on the other side.

I have no hopes of removing the main brome grass patch that developed on the edge of the drive. All I can do is cut the flowering stems, and chop it down like the local farmers when it gets too high. If I managed to dig it out, I would disturb the soil so much cheat and other grasses would come back with vengeance.

Notes on photographs: Taken 23 May 2019.
1. Cheat grass (Bromus tectorum).
2. Needle grass (Stipa comata).
3. June grass (Koeleria cristata).