buffalograss update

The ‘Cody’ buffalograss next door. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself, since I planted it. I had some extra plugs, asked my neighbor if she wanted a buffalograss lawn instead of a huge patch of weeds, and she said yes.

This is the result two years later. I paid for the plugs since I wanted to demonstrate what buffalograss could really do. You can see some of the plugs but these should fill in completely by the end of this year. There are still quite a few weeds but these could be pulled by hand, if the quality of help my neighbor got was worth anything. Maybe I should find someone besides me to do the weeding.

I suggested the lawn be mowed, and watered a little (the regulation fifteen minutes) since some areas were showing signs of going dormant. That night we got 1.75 inches of rain in about 45 minutes, so the way I see it, the watering didn’t count, and I can still say the lawn hasn’t been watered yet this year.

In any case, the deep creek-bottom loam probably helps the grass a lot. (The water table is several feet down, at least.) Last year, and so far this year, the grass has only been watered when it shows signs of going dormant. I figure, reasonably, that it might need to be watered twice before the first of October. (Should I say that again?)

This picture makes me think of the trips, the very long, hot trips, we used to make down to the state fair in Pueblo, and how I would stop at every corn dog stand on the fairgrounds. I think my record was nine.

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a new rule, and a milkweed

I have this new rule. No gardening if the humidity goes over 15 percent. Steam baths are not for me. With all the rain, the humidity is an almost unbearable 20 percent, and so I’m staying inside.

I am a humidity wimp. Fortunately for me, as the temperature rises here, the humidity goes down. Give me a hundred degrees and five percent humidity any day of the week. I’ll be outside working.

Anyway, it gave me an excuse to race outside, cut this flower and bring it inside to photograph it. I know, it looks like something waiting for you at the bottom of a pit in a science fiction movie. It’s the flower of the showy milkweed, Asclepias speciosa.

There’s some interesting information on the relationship of milkweeds to the monarch butterfly on the Monarch Watch website and photos of many (not all) of the native species. Some, like the showy milkweed, will survive on our natural precipitation, since it grows right around here. The Antelope Horn, Asclepias asperula, is one of the coolest-looking, and will accept very dry conditions (I think mine isn’t going to bloom this year; it must have its reasons), and I’m still waiting for someone to give me seed of A. pumila; I’m to lazy to drive anywhere to collect it. There are spine-tinglingly desirable dryland species for the rock garden like A. cryptoceras and A. ruthiae, but they’re as difficult to keep in the garden for any length of time as they are desirable. (I don’t want to hear from anyone who has drifts of them in their garden.)

 

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