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Resident Prairie grass expert

Rudd

Rudd

Life Member
anyone? I have 4-5 acres that I am wanting to plant strips of native grasses and such. I thought someone listed a meeting here a while back. Just need some general ideas or links to investigate this. Thanks for any information.
 
I would contact Greg Brenneman gregb@iastate.edu to talk about or copies of ISU extension publications. One is "Prairie Establishment" another is "Planning a Prairie" and the third is "Seedings for CRP". These cover establishing native grass pretty well. I attended a field day that he coordinated last year on various methods for seeding and ground prep that was helpful. Other sources are private lands biologist from IDNR for your area.
 
Steve Barnhart is ISU's Extension Forage Agronomist. Establishment is a bugger with warm-season grasses. Most choose switchgrass because of that. You might check with your local NRCS office too. They may have a program to help.
 
Im by no means a expert but be carefull with switchgrass it is great cover but very invasive. If you plant much for forbs the switch will overtake them. I like Big Blue, Lil Blue, Indian grass, Side oats, canada wild rye and then as many forbs as you can afford. The Grasses provide great cover some food value and the forbs provide color and food. Buy only local genotype seed it might be more expensive but will grow better and produce more seed than inferior/non local seed . A couple great books are, Restoring the tallgrass prairie by Shirley Shirley and Tallgrass Prairie Wildflowers by Ladd/Oberle.
 
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