We're often asked "Can I sow wildflower seed onto grass?" Generally customers have an existing lawn or pasture which they want to enhance. The short answer is it may well not work.

You'll more often than not have a better chance of establishing a wildflower meadow area if you start from scratch. On the other hand sometimes - if the lawn has been converted from old pasture, for example - people are amazed by the wildflowers which appear if they just leave it unmown over the summer.

It's not ALWAYS impossible to successfully oversow if you take that route, but that depends on several things.

If you have fertile soil, over time grasses or - if not managed - pernicious weeds - will overwhelm the wildflowers you are trying to establish. Even if you start with bare earth it's a problem, so if the grass is already there it's doubly difficult. It's not that wildflowers don't like fertile soils; they just don't respond to higher nutrient levels in the same way that grass or plants like dock or nettle will do.

If you're not sure how fertile your soil is - or whether it's alkaline or acidic - you can get a soil test done.

Grass is so successful because it grows fast and has a tendency to thatch, blocking out any competition. Some grasses are particularly thuggish. Particular favourites of lawn mixes are cultivars of Lolium perenne, Perennial rye grass.

Photo: Wildlife Trusts

If you're looking at a sea of these kind ofspikeletsin summer, then forget converting your lawn to a wildflower meadow! No amount of careful preparation or parasitic plants (see below) is going to work, I'm afraid. You may have some initial success, but within a couple of years you'll be looking at a lot of ryegrass again. There are other aggressive coarser grasses too, but PRG is the main offender as cultivars are always an important constituent of lawn or grazing mixes.

On the other hand, when you have a careful look at your grass you may be pleasantly surprised. People often find that they have a range of wildflowers they haven't noticed, or which just haven't had a chance to get going. Following the advice below will help them do so.

So, you have a promising site with what looks like fine grasses. What do you do to prepare it for overseeding with a wildflower seed mix?

You need to really beat up the existing grass, to the extent that you can see up to 50% earth. You need to do this through a combination of scarifying and cutting. To break up the thatch of the existing grass, first cut it. Then use a chain harrow to larger sites, or for a garden a scarifier, spring rake or hand cultivator. Once you've done that, cut it again - really short. If you're lucky enough to have livestock, do the cutting with them!

You're trying to create gaps large enough for the slow germinating and growing wildflowers to establish before they're overwhelmed by faster growing grass. You may even feel you need to clear small patches completely to give them as good a chance as possible.

If you then decide to add some wildflower seed, source it from a reputable supplierand always check that not only does it include appropriate native species, but that the seed originates in the UK. "Wildflowers" can apparently mean different things to different suppliers! They need to be recently harvested and stored properly too. Although a wildflower only seed mix will cost a lot more than a meadow mix (i.e. including grasses) you won't need much of it; reckon on something around 1g per square metre.

If you're sowing in late summer - autumn (the optimal time), then it's helpful if your mix includes Yellow Rattle, Rhinanthus minor. If it doesn't, then it's probably worth buying a little to add. If sowing in spring, add it the following September ayway as the seed has limited viability.

You could at this point - particularly if you have a small area - decide it's all too much and pop some plug plants in instead. They're more expensive and you'll get less diversity, but they're definitely an option. Reckon on 5 per square metre, so a single one of these trays will cover 25 square metres.

...is simple. The seeding rate is so low - reckon on around 1g per square metre - that you'll need to mix your seed mix with some peat free compost or sand to make sure you don't run out of expensive ammunition half way through sowing. The ratio of inert carrier to seed doesn't matter.

If you're seeding a large area, mark it out into squares with canes. If you have a square 5mX5m you know you will need around 25g of seed for that area.

Scatter evenly across the area you want to seed. Do two passes if you can, one left to right and the other front to back.

Once seeded, if its practical, give the area a light role to make sure the seed is in good contact with the earth.

If you can bear it, keep the newly seeded area cut for 6 months after seeding, to around 3cm. This will help keep the grass from overwhelming the seedling wildflowers. The exception to this is if your wildflower seed included cornfield annuals like poppies, in which case let them flower before cutting.

This regime will also help control weeds, but if you see plants like dock appearing then have them out!

Success!

Originally posted here:
Sowing Wildflower Seed Onto Grass | Habitat Aid

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) With little change in southeastern Nebraskas drought despite some rain, lawns are hurting.

The time to invest in your lawn is now, according to the Nebraska Extension office in Lancaster County.

Temperatures largely influence how the grasses here grow, controlling when you should seed and fertilize.

Now through Sept. 15, both Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue grow better as air and soil temperatures cool down. There is better root growth and new seedlings get off to a better start.

We have cooler temperatures and hopefully more rain which allow for better root development on those new grass plants, said Sarah Browning, an educator at Nebraska Extension. Fall is also a time when we have less weed pressure, so we dont have to fight the weeds quite as bad as you do with the spring seeding.

When it comes to overseed and patch areas, there are steps to ready the soil before putting down any product.

Before you overseed, always dethatch the lawn, said Christian Burbach, owner of Black Label Property Services. Dethatching is a process where youll scrape up the dead grass thats been accumulating over the summers, years, however long. Especially if you are not bagging your grass, youre going to want to dethatch almost on a yearly basis. This makes sure that youre not going to have a bunch of dead spots on your yard from all that dead grass accumulating.

After dethatching, professionals then encourage aerating your yard for the nutrients and oxygen it will provide the soil.

When you are ready to then overseed, buy the high-quality blue tag seed for your yard.

Once the seed is set, the area needs to be watered two to four times a day during the first two weeks, depending on temperatures.

As the grass approaches mowing height, you can slow down the number of times you water.

And mowing should start as soon as possible.

People dont want to wait and allow the grass seedlings to get tall before they start to mow, Browning said. They want to stick with their normal mowing schedule and start mowing those seedlings as quickly as possible to help them develop maturity.

Experts say getting your seeding done as early as possible is important because each week of delay means two to four additional weeks the grass will need to mature in the fall.

See more here:
Dethatch, aerate, seed: Nebraska Extension says the time for lawn care is now - KLKN

Clear-cutting trees to make it easier to raise cattle in the Midwest eliminated much of the landscape known as Midwest Savanna, but an experimental farm in southern Missouri is trying to prove that grazing animals in forests is better for the environment, farmers, and the cows.

Midwest Savannas typically had many trees, but they were far apart, providing shade but also enough sunlight and space for native grasses to grow on the forest floor.

That habitat was created intentionally by a lot of indigenous communities that lived here, said Ashley Conway-Anderson, an agroforestry professor at the University of Missouri. Intentionally managed with fire, and then once fire opened things up, what came next was grass and what came next was large grazing herbivores.

Those herbivores were bison and elk 500 years ago, but Conway-Anderson said they could be cows today. Shes leading a multi-year study at the University of Missouris Wurdak Extension and Education Center, about 30 miles southeast of Rolla, to first thin out the forest areas, get native grasses growing and bring in cows to graze.

When Europeans came to the Americas, it started a pattern of forests either being overplanted, unmanaged, or clear-cut to make way for pastures or fields for crops.

The practice of returning to more natural efforts of grazing livestock in the forest is called silvopasture, and it's a very old way of raising animals.

While there isnt anything new about the practice, Conway-Andersons research is getting more attention because healthy forests can be a critical part of combating climate change.

Trees are good at keeping carbon out of the atmosphere and are also resilient in the face of extreme weather caused by climate change.

When we do have floods, when we do have droughts and fires, it wont be wholesale destruction. It will be able to recover much more quickly and maintain functionality longer when it experiences those inevitable challenges, Conway-Anderson said.

Her goal is to get the data and create an example to help farmers move their cattle from open fields into forests.

Jonathan Ahl / Harvest Public Media

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It could be a short trip, she said, because so many want to, and some already are, like Iowa farmer Bruce Carney, who raises cattle on his family farm north of Des Moines.

More than 10 years ago, he decided to convert 200 acres from corn and soybeans fields to land for cattle to graze.

What I learned after seeding a crop farm down was that I needed trees. I needed windbreaks. I needed shade. I needed a living barn. To me, thats what trees do for you, Carney said.

Carney said trees make cows happier, healthier and bring in more money when they are sold. He is cited as a success story of silvopasture development, but Carney eschews the label.

Im not a silvopasture expert, Carney said, Im just a guy who planted trees. And Id like to do more.

The kind of research going on at the University of Missouri could help him and other farmers do that by developing best practices and plans to make forest grazing work.

Another benefit of the movement is that it can make small farms more viable by increasing the amount of money they bring in.

By its very nature, silvopasture is intentional and intensive, so it allows for us to do more on one piece of land, said Kaitie Adams, the Illinois Community Agroforester for the Wisconsin-based Savanna Institute.

You can grow food like apples or walnuts, have a timber business and graze cattle all on one reasonably sized piece of land, Adams said. And with farmland prices skyrocketing, that makes it more possible for new, younger people to get into farming.

There are a lot of challenges to making a go of having cattle graze in forests, including the time it takes for trees to grow, the inefficiency of raising cattle that graze as opposed to producing them in a factory farm, and the time and effort required to manage a forest properly.

Conway-Anderson and other advocates believe its worth it, and are optimistic that they can prove it.

I want to get more people thinking about this as a viable possibility. Because even if everybody does this on 40 acres that they have, thats a huge amount that can add to this mosaic and help rebuild the tapestry of savanna landscape that once was here, Conway-Anderson said.

Silvopasture proponents are also banking on the increased need for such measures, as climate change puts pressure on agriculture to come up with solutions in the coming years.

Link:
Getting cattle into the forest could help climate change, farmers and the livestock - KOSU

Dyers chamomile, self-heal, vipers bugloss, goldenrod, hares bell, maiden pink, old mans beard, ladys bedstraw: some of the old names of the wild flowers in the new summerhouse meadow.

Rampant, thigh-high now in just a few weeks; sunlit grass-seed-coloured blond as Henris hair. It takes a couple of hours to acclimatise but with a little discreet tidying at the edges, a path or two cut through, we walk around in wonder. Flower vases throughout the house bringing the outside in.

The bird cherries are in full glory the small, sweet black fruit preferred by us; a more bitter translucent scarlet favoured by the flights of birds who ferry them to their nests.

The newly sown Serifos poppies, red as old soldiers tunics, have taken. The once-blue bed is already a mass of exuberant competing colour, vivid pinks and oranges. Calendula and nasturtium join the seeding phacelia, the cornflowers and borage. Others I have to ask my old Collins illustrated book and PlantNet about.

The ripe redcurrants will add sharpness to sweet local strawberries. The blackcurrants will be saved for Inas soft jam. The revelations, though, are the apple tree, almost barren last year, and the younger espalier pears.

Everything appears to have benefited from the stinking sack of organic manure I widely spread, to Henris distress. The trees are heavy with too many fruit so I cull through carefully.

I trim a few ground-hugging branches at the base of the towering larch and red pine to let air and occasional rain through. Mostly though we are here to mooch, to sit and eat outside, read newspapers, perhaps even a novel. Less so, our emails and phones.

We walk about in the mornings and evenings, consult the flower and bird apps. We cycle along the waters edge to the good fish shop in the small harbour. We wander to the sea at sunset. We count ourselves fortunate.

Allan Jenkinss Plot 29 (4th Estate, 9.99) is out now. Order it for 8.49 from guardianbookshop.com

Follow this link:
Reaping the rewards of a summer garden - The Guardian

Q: What can I do with my unseeded acres now the weather is more favourable?

A: Flooding and drought at seeding time are common situations that may lead to acres being unseeded to previously planned high-value crops. While crop insurance can provide varying levels of compensation for acres unseeded to long-season cash crops, sometimes opportunities exist to take advantage of later improvement of weather. A common practice in the Prairies is to plant these fields later with cover crops such as annual forages. This provides multiple economic and ecological benefits.

Economic benefits of cover crops include input cost reduction and additional revenue. For example, forage legumes can reduce nitrogen fertilizer expenses for the next crop, potentially increasing net profit over the course of your crop rotation. Furthermore, forages can reduce the need for herbicides by suppressing weeds through their rapid growth.

Additional cash flow can be realized when forages are harvested as greenfeed and silage. On the ecological side, forages can enhance soil health, as living roots provide food and shelter for soil microbes. Forages can also minimize soil erosion and nutrient loss when grasses are included due to the buildup of organic matter via above-ground biomass and fibrous root systems as well as nutrient recycling.

Selecting annual forages as cover crops requires careful considerations and chief among them are the primary goals of your production, species selection and location of your operation. The primary goal of cover cropping annual forages could be as simple as growing feed for grazing and/or silage. Suitable species can be chosen from legumes, grasses and broadleaf plants.

Legumes, in addition to building soil nitrogen levels, increase organic matter, improve soil tilth and serve as hosts to mycorrhizal fungi. Grasses, in addition to minimizing erosion and nutrient loss, can be used for silage/greenfeed and to extend the grazing season either with swath grazing or late-regrowth grazing.

Grass blends may include annual/Italian ryegrass underseeded with oats, barley or triticale. Broadleaf plants, especially the Brassica species, can help to break soil hardpans with their large roots, as well as reduce soil compaction and upcycle nutrients to near the soil surface.

A blend of these species, which includes legumes and Brassica species, may be seeded. A cereal may be used as a nurse crop to provide additional feed.

Optimal seeding rates for annual forage blends will vary depending on the blend used and should be discussed with your local crop advisor.

Sola Ajiboye, PhD, MBA, AIT, is a manager of agronomic solutions for Nutrien Ag Solutions for southern Alberta (North).

Here is the original post:
Economic and ecological benefits of annual forages - Grainews

|

News reporting

News reporting

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

BISMARCK, N.D. Agriculture interests often look with suspicion about aggressive federal environmental goals.

Some rural media critics have warned that Biden Administration's 30 by 30 goal is some kind of land grab, ostensibly adding 30% of America covered by environment-conserving measures by the year 2030, by somehow co-opting conservation programs.

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But professionals delivering conservation policy through the U.S. Department of Agriculture say the 30 by 30 goals for the USDA are more down to earth beefing up the same voluntary programs in which farmers eagerly participate, and for which demand outstrips funding.

I think 30-by-30 is going to require that amount of accountability of what weve done in the past with funds, said Mary Podoll, who has headed the USDAs Natural Resources Conservation Service in North Dakota since 2011. Shes served in the NRCS across several administrations Republican and Democrats and said policies primarily are made by Congress, not whatever administration is in power.

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

Farmers regularly use these programs to improve pollution-impaired waters, as well as cutting soil erosion from wind and water. She said Congress controls the programs, which are not subject to presidential whim, by either party.

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

She acknowledged farm groups are wary of federal agencies, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPAs Waters of the United States or "WOTUS" policies, governing navigable waters (and sometimes temporary prairie potholes) have swung back and forth between administrations. Podoll said its important to consider that the NRCS also helps implement EPAs voluntary Section 319 Nonpoint Source Management Program designed to improve water quality. In North Dakota, the EPA funds are matched with the North Dakota

You know that counts, Podoll said, for 30-by-30. That will be part of how the president can say, Were protecting 30% of our nations landscapes with these programs. We could probably already show that the United States is already meeting some of that 30 by 30.'

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

The NRCS already has notified Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack that the agency have and can cover more than 30% of the United States through voluntary programs, Podoll said.

Trent Loos, a regional rural radio and podcast personality, has been one voice warning of a potential federal land grab, and how it could link with conservation programs. Loos, who ranches and lives in the Litchfield/Hazard area of Nebraska, 34 miles north of Kearney, was on former President Donald Trumps agricultural advisory committee.

In podcast interviews, Loos has worried aloud in meetings that government already owns 33% of U.S. land and 30-by-30 means means that the feds want more a total of more than 60%. At the time of the meetings, Loos was the declared running mate of Theresa Thibodeau, a former state senator who was seeking the Republican nomination for governor in the Cornhusker State. The duo placed fourth among Republicans in the May 10, 2022, primary election, with 6% of the party votes.

Podoll acknowledged that three people coming home from Loos presentations had contacted her agency, anxious to cancel their Conservation Stewardship Programs , one of the NRCS popular voluntary programs.

Their worry: that their five-year CSP award somehow could become permanent part of this federal land grab.

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

A federal takeover doesnt seem to be much of a worry of Lewis Heaton, a long-time user of the CSP. Heaton and his wife, Sherry, at McKenzie, North Dakota, farm and ranch on about 10,000 acres and raise about 600 head of cattle in a cow-calf operation. About half of the Heaton operation grows crops corn, soybeans and wheat, and some flax.

Lewis, 67, started farming in 1975 after picking up a degree at the North Dakota State College of Science at Wahpeton. He signed his first CSP contract in the 1990s, as the NRCS helped advance him into no-till farming. He started with a no-till corn planter and then bought a no-till air drill.

Mikkel Pates

If you did em you got an incentive payment, Lewis said. If you didnt, you didnt get the payment. And thats about as simple as you get. He was completely no-till in the early 2000s.

After about ten years, he became more interested in grazing system. The Heatons bought another ranch of mostly rangeland and used the CSP to implement grazing plans, now involving about 80 pastures added one or two a year. The rangeland didnt have all of the infrastructure they needed, and they added water and fencing over time.

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

CSP has helped, as well as the Environmental Quality Incentive Program.

We tried to do the things that dont cost a lot of money, Lewis said. If you turned one pasture into two by stringing some electric fence, the cost is really minimal, Lewis said. When you have a water source you can split between the two its really a cost-effective way of getting some improvement.

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

Lewis first enrolled in what is now called the classic program.

The first thing you have to do is to have something that has incentive for profitability on your ranch, you know, and then we might move into what you can do to meet that, Lewis said, noting rotational grazing, changing season-of-use. There are quite a few things that weve learned over the years that really do help not only your soil health, but is a big benefit for society in general, I would say.

Lewis is a board member for the Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, which fosters partnerships among federal, state, and private partners for wetland and grassland habitat conservation. He is a mentor with the North Dakota Grazing Land Coalition, a group that puts on workshops and pasture tours to foster increased profitability and sustainability in regenerative agriculture.

Asked whether he worries CSP could become some kind of federal land grab, Heaton answered this way: You read a lot of things. Theres a side to everything.

But Lewis acknowledges hes concerned about other things, like not-for-profit groups acquiring land for non-agricultural purposes. He has worries about the EPAs WOTUS policies that swing back and forth between administrations.

It makes people wonder where youre going to end up, he said, noting his farms have streams and drains.

Heatons latest five-year CSP contract expired in 2020. He wasnt eligible to re-enroll at that payment level without adding conservation practices. Hes considering enrolling as a new applicant, under some new environmental practices, possibly in the 2023 growing season.

Mikkel Pates / Agweek

He has some irrigated land and perhaps would apply for an incentive for variable-rate application technology across the whole farm varying the seeding rate according to soil type or whatever the baseline is.

And then your fertilization will be the same way, he said.

He used to have to plant the field corners, where the water didnt hit, separately.

With the variable-rate seeding we just go straight through with the planter and thatll automatically jump the population up and down. Same with the fertilizer, he said. A thumb drive on the tractor or fertilizer spreader would make it simple.

Lewis said he thinks the CSP could translate into carbon sequestration payments, but said it isnt clear how those markets will develop.

The major down side of the CSP is that it requires record-keeping and verifying, Lewis said. His ranch manager deals with field record-keeping on one ranch.

When youre moving cattle, you want to take a picture of the grass from one year to the next, he said. It takes work to verify everything that youre doing.

Here is the original post:
Will '30 by 30' be a stewardship boon or a federal 'land grab?' - Agweek

Swiss National Bank raised its position in shares of The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE:SMG Get Rating) by 6.2% in the 1st quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The firm owned 97,800 shares of the basic materials companys stock after buying an additional 5,700 shares during the period. Swiss National Bank owned about 0.18% of Scotts Miracle-Gro worth $12,025,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission.

Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also modified their holdings of the company. Advisor Group Holdings Inc. raised its stake in shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro by 15.6% in the fourth quarter. Advisor Group Holdings Inc. now owns 48,889 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $7,888,000 after acquiring an additional 6,613 shares in the last quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. raised its stake in shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro by 2.8% in the fourth quarter. Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. now owns 27,490 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $4,426,000 after acquiring an additional 759 shares in the last quarter. Toronto Dominion Bank acquired a new stake in shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro in the fourth quarter valued at $128,000. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. ADV acquired a new stake in shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro in the fourth quarter valued at $358,000. Finally, Envestnet Asset Management Inc. raised its stake in shares of Scotts Miracle-Gro by 4.4% in the fourth quarter. Envestnet Asset Management Inc. now owns 244,997 shares of the basic materials companys stock valued at $39,444,000 after acquiring an additional 10,219 shares in the last quarter. 62.23% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.

SMG opened at $82.11 on Thursday. The businesss 50-day simple moving average is $82.39 and its 200-day simple moving average is $105.36. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 7.55, a quick ratio of 1.10 and a current ratio of 2.42. The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company has a one year low of $72.58 and a one year high of $180.43. The stock has a market capitalization of $4.55 billion, a P/E ratio of -17.00 and a beta of 1.24.

The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, September 9th. Investors of record on Friday, August 26th will be issued a dividend of $0.66 per share. This represents a $2.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 3.22%. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, August 25th. Scotts Miracle-Gros dividend payout ratio is currently -54.66%.

SMG has been the topic of several analyst reports. TheStreet cut Scotts Miracle-Gro from a c rating to a d+ rating in a research note on Wednesday, August 3rd. JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut Scotts Miracle-Gro from an overweight rating to a neutral rating and cut their price target for the company from $130.00 to $95.00 in a research note on Thursday, June 9th. Wells Fargo & Company cut Scotts Miracle-Gro from an overweight rating to an equal weight rating and cut their price target for the company from $115.00 to $85.00 in a research note on Wednesday, June 22nd. Truist Financial cut Scotts Miracle-Gro from a buy rating to a hold rating and cut their price target for the company from $185.00 to $85.00 in a research note on Wednesday, June 8th. Finally, StockNews.com cut Scotts Miracle-Gro from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research note on Saturday, May 21st. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, six have assigned a hold rating, one has given a buy rating and one has assigned a strong buy rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $113.88.

(Get Rating)

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company engages in the manufacture, marketing, and sale of products for lawn, garden care, and indoor and hydroponic gardening in the United States and internationally. The company operates through three segments: U.S. Consumer, Hawthorne, and Other. It provides lawn care products comprising lawn fertilizers, grass seed products, spreaders, other durable products, and outdoor cleaners, as well as lawn-related weed, pest, and disease control products; gardening and landscape products include water-soluble and continuous-release plant foods, potting mixes and garden soils, mulch and decorative groundcover products, plant-related pest and disease control products, organic garden products, and lives goods and seeding solutions.

Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SMG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE:SMG Get Rating).

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Swiss National Bank Grows Stock Holdings in The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company (NYSE:SMG) - Defense World

When trying to produce bulb onions in Texas, many gardeners get more flowers than large onions. If onion seed are planted too early or transplants and sets are used in the fall so that they grow too large before winter, the plants form flowers or bolt when temperatures rise in the spring.

Bolting is more prevalent after a mild winter. Acting like a biological computer, the larger-than-pencil-sized onion plant adds up all of the hours of exposure to temperatures of 40 to 45. When this sum equals that total needed for flower initiation, bolting begins. This process is called vernalization.

Fall-seeded and transplanted onions are more susceptible to bolting the following spring if warm fall temperatures promote excessive growth. Use bulbs with flower stalks early because they will not make bulbs as large as plants which have not formed seed stems.

Also formation of the flower stem, whether removed or not, has occurred in the center of the onion bulb. When an onion which has initiated one of these flower stems is stored, the stem tissue decomposes, causing the entire onion to rot. Onions tolerate temperatures well below freezing. They may be planted from seed, from small bulbs called sets or from transplants. If sets or transplants are used, plant them 3/4 inch deep and 3 inches apart. Do not transplant onions more than 1 inch deep. When seeding onions, plant them 1/4 inch deep.

Because onions are a cool-season vegetable, they grow best during mild temperatures. High temperatures slow vegetative (leaf) growth. The objective is to promote maximum growth in the spring when temperatures rise above 40 to 50 range but before the weather gets hot. In South and Central Texas, plant seed of short-day onions such as 1015Y (Texas A&M Supersweet), Yellow Granex (known as Vidalia), Grano 502 (yellow), White Granex or Crystal Wax (white) and Burgundy (red) directly into the garden during October or November or wait until February and set out plants.

Newer varieties have come out as well. Seeds sown directly into the garden and covered with 1/4 inch of soil should sprout within 7 to 10 days. If planted thickly, pull the plants and use as green onions or scallions for salads or fresh eating in 8 to 10 weeks. For larger bulbs, thin the plants until they are at least 3 inches apart to allow for bulb expansion. Fertilizing onion plants is also vital to success.

Research indicates that onion growth and yield are greatly enhanced by banding phosphorus about 2 to 3 inches below the seed at planting time. The phosphorus acts as a starter solution which invigorates the growth of young seedlings. Banding phosphorus such as super phosphate (0-20-0) 2 to 3 inches below the seed involves making a trench 3 inches deep, pouring cup of super phosphate per 10 row feet, covering with about 2 inches of soil, sowing seed and covering lightly with 1/4 to inch of soil. Once established, give onion plants additional fertilizer 19-5-9 as a side application every 4 weeks. Sidedress with ammonium sulfate (21-0-0) if soil is already high in phosphorus and potassium.

This fertilizer encourages larger plants. Each leaf forms a ring in the onion bulb. More leaves mean more rings and larger onion bulbs. Use about cup of the fertilizer for each 10 feet of onion row. Scatter the fertilizer evenly between the rows and water. Weeds are easy to remove when they are 3 to 4 inches tall. When hoeing weeds and grass, do not work the soil too deeply for it may damage shallow roots.

When possible always hand pull weeds to avoid root damage. Onions may be picked as green onions from the time they are pencil size until they begin to form bulbs. For dry bulb onions, let plants grow larger. Onions are mature when the top of the plant falls over. Physically breaking over the top of onion plants does not increase bulb size. When harvesting bulb onions, loosen the plants in the soil by pulling gently. Let them stay in the garden for 1 or 2 days to dry. Then remove the tops and roots and let them continue drying in baskets or boxes. Green onions can be harvested and used immediately. Green onions may be eaten fresh or can be chopped and added to salads. Bulb onions may be sliced or diced and used in many recipes or they may be dipped in batter and fried as onion rings.

Fertilizing the lawn

Fertilizing is not so one size fits all as we would sometimes like for it to be. Every environment is different with its own expectations, use, history, and needs. Remember that the health of your turfgrass is heavily dependent on the soil it is being grown on. Look for a custom approach that is specifically catered to your turfgrass area. Start by testing your soil. For information on soil testing, visit the Soil, Water, and Forage Testing Laboratory website: http://soiltesting.tamu.edu/ or contact the Brown County Extension Office for more information.

Soil tests will give you a feel for some of the characteristics of your soil that are important for growing healthy plants including soil pH, soil salinity, and the relative abundance of the major nutrients your turfgrass needs to survive. While there are approximately 18 plant essential nutrients, primarily, we focus on a select few: nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium (N-P-K) are the three primary macronutrients that are available in most fertilizer products.

The analysis or grade on the fertilizer bag is indicative of the ratio of (N, P, and K). So, a product with a grade of 15-5-10 has a 3-1-2 ratio of these nutrients. A 3-1-1 or 3-1-2 ratio fertilizer is usually recommended for home lawns in our area.

Other elements commonly looked at by urban soil tests include calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, zinc, manganese, copper, boron, and sodium. Sodium testing is conducted to shed light on soil quality as opposed to plant nutritional needs. Every element, or nutrient, has a key part to play and balance is important. Too much or too little of any one essential nutrient can have a negative effect on your turfgrass and its overall wellbeing.

It is possible to apply fertilizers at inappropriate times. Nitrogen, in particular, should be applied only during months of active growth. As a guide, use the first and last frost dates for your part of the state. Your first fertilizer application of the year should come approximately 4 6 weeks after the last frost date, or once the grass has been mowed at least twice. Your last fertilizer application should go out approximately 4 6 weeks before your first frost date. This will minimize winter injury and Disease risk. In our area we use March 20th as the last normal frost date.

This year however, we had a frost in early April. November 15th is our date for average first frost in the fall. Use caution when purchasing or applying combination products such as those which combine preemergent herbicides and nitrogen fertilizers, as it is often not appropriate or beneficial to apply these types of products simultaneously in a home lawn setting. Especially where yard trees are present.

Most people over fertilize their lawn. The recommended fertilizer application rate is 1lb of actual nitrogen per 1,000 sq feet of lawn. So, if you had a 50lb bag of 15-5-10 fertilizer it contains 7.5lbs of actual nitrogen. This one bag would cover 7500 sq feet of lawn.

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Time to harvest onions in the garden - Brownwood Bulletin

READERS are concerned aftertraining and essential maintenance was forced to come to a standstill after caravans were pitched on a football ground.

Travellers arrived onWalneyIsland FCs mini football pitch on Tummer Hill onWednesday evening.

After being made aware of their arrival, committee member and football manager Stephen McCullough arrived on the site and approached the group, however he claims they refused to move.

L1A1 said: "Just carry on using it, don't let them win."If the pitch is damaged, call the Police, and have the owners of the cars and caravans prosecuted. Criminal Damage, the pitch is a valuable asset."

Barrow Cat said: "This is ridiculous now this is the fourth site in Barrow they have been on. The council have spent thousands to evict them but they're still here. They never left any rubbish behind at ormsgill but kids tipped the bins over. "

Julie Crompton said: "The reason they park where they like with impunity is because they don't care what the council, the law or anyone else thinks. They don't follow rules and have a total disregard for anyone or anything. If you don't want them there forget the law."

Chase Ballantyne said: "Give them some of the achers of derelict land to use that's just sitting there then they have no reason to keep going place to place everytime they are moved on its worked in other parts of the country."

Emma Fitzsimmons said: "Police move then its a playing field for the kids football, they seem to be able to do as they like."

There are also concerns over the state of the pitch once the caravans have goneand that there is not enough time to complete pitch maintenance before the start of the season, including grass cutting, top soiling, seeding and aerating the pitches.

READ MORE:Concern as travellers pitch on football ground

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'Don't let them win' - Readers concerned after travellers pitch on football ground - The Mail

There is a low hill in Marlay Park near the childrens playground. It is a spoil mountain made of soil and rock, excavated when the M50 was built. This unromantic leftover is becoming a wild (and Wildean) place. A labyrinth has been mown through ribbon rows of close-planted native trees. At the top a sculpture of a face by Agnes Conway is set in the ground like a sleeping goddess under a green blanket. Her nose is regularly clambered on by the children who drift from the playground to the top of the mound.

The young trees sway happily in their river of tall grass. They are vigorous thrivers: hazel, spindle, crab apple, hawthorn and blackthorn, great at greening ground left by large earth movers. Millennia ago it was glaciers doing the moving rather than dump trucks.

Assistant foreman gardener Louise Connolly planted the labyrinth in the cold grip of winter. She does her best planting in winter. She hopes the canopy will tunnel in another few years to bring people up close and personal with a native hedgerow. In future summers the labyrinth should be heady with the honey smell of hawthorn blossom.

Gardener Louise Connolly says Marlay Park has 'great bones' and 'all were doing is dressing it up'. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times

Connolly is wearing her knee pads when I arrive at Marlay House to talk to her about wilding public places. Hip trouble means she walks with a light crutch. It doesnt stop her hopping in and out of her veteran John Deere Gator with more agility than me. After 36 years with the parks service she is in her element. There is a sense of flow, like she is harnessed to a natural system. Now Im gardening the way I gardened at home, she says. Its such a joy. How could you not enjoy it?

Practices changed in the 300-acre suburban park in south Dublin four years ago when Dn Laoghaire Rathdown County Council went chemical-free. Until then glyphosate was routinely used to kill off green areas for replanting. Summer bedding plants were brought in to replace spring bedding. These plants were very highly bred for their bling effect, says Connolly. They stayed for three months and were then removed before the soil was dug over again. It was a waste of money, time and effort.

The big rethink started with seeding a grassy area near the courtyard with wildflowers. It had plenty of poppies and colour in the first year, but then it grew less vibrant as docks and other plants came along to help the soil recover from being rotavated. We decided were not going to dig anymore, Connolly explains. Now she mulches new planting areas with tonnes of recycled Christmas tree chip. It smothers grass and creates space for gently curving rivers of perennial plants.

[Want to be a rewilder? Heres how]

There are drifts of forget-me-nots, the tiny starry woodruff flowers, a line of comfrey along by the old buildings. There are wild plants in the mix, like dead nettle and burdock in a flow of gorgeous colour under a cedar that is more than a century old. There was nothing here because nothing grew here before, she says.

Im visiting in May; the spring bulbs are dying back and summer flowers are beginning. One thing finishes and something else will come in. Eventually itll take care of itself.

In the walled garden her gardener colleague Paul Burke has created a series of no-dig beds where he is growing perennial flowering plants for the park, along with vegetable crops. His plan is to create a meadow-like food garden, loosening rigid ideas of walled kitchen gardens.

Connollys planting under the trees isnt wild. Its naturalistic. Theyre not wild plants but this is a park, she says.

And people love it. Its a haven for birds and insects. Ground ivy provides cover for small mammals. Not mowing under certain trees has meant that they can seed themselves. The wild-seeded trees will be moved in dormant season to the labyrinth. Connollys colleague who opens the park early in the morning has noticed an increase in bird life. We have so many more finches than we used to.

A bumblebee sips nectar from an Aquilegia flower in Marlay Park.Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times

Elsewhere in the park a full meadow is thronged with plantains waving their brown soldier heads in a haze of dandelion fluff. The meadow is bordered with veteran trees. Marlay has great bones, Connolly says. All were doing is dressing it up.

A mown path allows people to walk through it. Nettles and cow parsley throng the tree line, a wild meadow in suburbia, no-mow at scale. It is cut once a year. A farmer from Tallaght will take a hay crop in the early autumn.

Our idea of a park, like our idea of Christmas, has been heavily influenced by the Victorians. Manicured lawns, bling bedding plants and exotic specimens were ostentatious shows of wealth and colonial domination. They kept it all spick and span with loads of staff and money, says Connolly. The long-gone armies of weeders, clippers and scythers were replaced with fossil fuel-driven machines and chemical bioweapons to maintain rigid straight lines. Bourgeois big house gardens came to the burbs. In a biodiversity and climate crisis where we understand the cost of that shortcut, new practices are needed. The Victorians have had their day, Connolly says.

Credit for the shift in how public land is being managed has to go to the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, first published in 2015 by Trinity professor Jane Stout and Dr Una Fitzpatrick, senior ecologist with the National Biodiversity Data Centre, with detailed recommendations for councils, transport authorities, businesses, schools, sports clubs, farmers and individuals. Each section contains a range of suggestions for pollinator-friendly actions, from leaving grass verges along roads and motorways unmown, to creating wildflower meadows, protecting nesting habitats and reducing the use of pesticides.

[Rewilding Irish landscape would bring big benefits for nature and humans]

More than half of all local authorities have endorsed the plan and agreed to take specific actions. But it remains a series of recommendations rather than regulations. Until recently full-time staff dedicated to the plan in the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture have been promised rather than delivered. It is dependent on partners signing up.

New recommendations are expected to come from the Citizens Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, and the Government has promised those recommendations will inform a policy on biodiversity which will hopefully make nature-friendly land management the way in which things are done.

The term rewilding is believed to have first been used by a Newsweek journalist writing about radical environmentalism in 1990. The idea was described as letting nature take the lead by wilderness advocate Zoltan Kun in a recent webinar with the Irish Wildlife Trust. Rewilding can be big or small: from naturally regenerating thousands of hectares by fencing or introducing wolves, to putting the mower away so suburban soil can find its mojo.

It can be as small as a window box with local soil and a nettle and a thistle planted in it to allow us to watch the spidery creatures, caterpillars and tiny hovering insects that need unloved plants for a home.

The last idea is from garden designer Mary Reynolds. She designs arks, or Acts of Regenerative Kindness, rather than gardens now. She is convinced that the future will be ark-shaped with nature at the prow.

Mary Reynolds with her dog Lucky. Photograph: Claire Leadbitter

Ideas of control are hard to relinquish. Ireland has a history of locking up wildness and throwing away the key. Weedy unkempt places have associations of poverty. Letting the land go was a visible sign of defeat or grief for many people, the loss of loved ones through bereavement or emigration. Prosperity has been drawn on the landscape with ripped-out hedgerows and a blank green carpet of heavily-fertilised rye grass. We need a new story about wild places.

Its 20 years since Reynolds won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show, becoming the youngest woman ever to win. Her success sent a dart of hope through environmentalists hearts that the days of laurel hedges and scalped lawns were numbered. Woolly, wavey gardens full of native plants would be planted with pride.

Reynolds was taken aback by the emotion that greeted her garden, a stone archway opening to a path with four Druid thrones around a fire bowl over a pond with more than 500 native plants. People were moved to tears.

It was something they didnt know that they had lost until they saw it kind of honoured, she explains. One old lady she was one of the lost Irish had come to work as a cleaner aged 17 and was then in her 80s started crying her eyes out. She had never managed to get back to Ireland and she knew she was never going to get back but now she felt she had been back.

In 2018 Reynolds founded We Are The Ark, to guide people to return gardens to nature to combat biodiversity loss. Her website gives a simple how-to for anyone who wants to build a natural haven which will sustain itself. A key step is to put up a sign This is an ark to explain what some may see as a messy place.

Reynolds mission is to persuade people of our innate ability to connect with nature, with land and with creatures. We seem to think we are completely separate.

I know that Id be considered a complete lunatic in many ways but Im very sure that the future is what I do. If you want to save the planet you have to start with your own patch we have to stop imposing our view of what should be in the ground on top of the earth. We have to let her decide.

Creating an ark is dependent on how much damage the soil has undergone. It definitely can need a lot of help. Sometimes the damage is so profound that we have to restore it as much as we can.

Central to the idea is providing as many different layers of habitat as you can within the space you have. In arking, as Reynolds call it, humans step in to be the creatures like wolves and deer that balance a habitat. Larger spaces can accommodate multiple habitats: scrubby areas where brambles are allowed to spread into native thorny thickets. A pond can be a bowl of water with some oxygenating plants in it. Dead hedges, piles of logs can provide places of sanctuary. Holes in boundaries between gardens, fences replaced with hedgerows.

How amazing Ireland would be if we were covered in our own plants, if we didnt decide to import things that were pretty? Reynolds asks. How do we think we always need to be like someone else?

[How the baron of Dunsany carried out an ambitious rewilding project in Meath]

The gardening industry has made a grab for rewilding trends with wildflower seed mixes, packets showing a riot of colour, most of which are not native plants. If we keep doing what garden centres tell us to do, those big showy flowers, theyre like big fat signs for McDonalds, says Reynolds. The insects flock to them, so the more insignificant but far more vital native plants fail to find space or pollinators. We are prettifying ourselves to extinction.

We need our hearts open to include every little wild weed. Leave spaces to find their way, is her advice. Docks will come up, thistles will come up. Nature is very intelligent and knows how to heal itself.

If your soil seedbank is depleted and you have to sow, new seeds should be native grown and wild, or better still, gathered from your neighbourhood in late summer and autumn. A useful intervention can be to scrape some bare soil in a lawn and sow yellow rattle seeds, Reynolds says. Yellow rattle roots strangle grass roots and spread throughout a field or lawn, making space for wild seeds to germinate and grow.

Reynolds has a new book coming out in October called We Are the Ark. Over the next four years she will be working on a flagship ark in the grounds of Westport House in Co Mayo. Everything will be sourced from within 16km. We will be holding nature in a new light. Its the god of everything we are. Were screwed without our home, she says. I dont want to go and live with Elon Musk on Mars.

Twenty years on she cant bear the Chelsea Flower Show now. Its part of an industry that has become a juggernaut, paving gardens with Chinese granite and stone from India. Invasive plants and non-native plants are taking away the food supply of our fellow creatures.

This year Chelseas best-in-show garden was an echo of Reynolds win, with the award going to a garden sponsored by Rewilding Britain. Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt recreated a beaver dam, using wild plants, grasses and native trees. Like a deliberately tousled hairstyle, it looked like a quiet green corner of countryside undisturbed by people or other large animals.

In the two decades since Reynolds win, the plastic grass industry has marched across multiple gardens. You never have to force this [ark creation] on anyone, she says. The freedom to choose it is part of the message. And her take on plastic grass? Eventually some brave politician will step in and make that illegal.

Irish Wildlife Trust campaign officer Pdraic Fogarty: 'Should we be keeping the Phoenix Park absolutely identical to what it was in the 1700s?'

In the middle of writing this piece I opened Clarissa Pinkola Ests book Women who Run with The Wolves, to one of the many pages I dog-earred while reading it. When we think of reclamation it may bring to mind bulldozers or carpenters, the restoration of an old structure, and that is the modern usage of the word. However, the older meaning is this: The word reclamation is derived from the old French reclaimer, meaning to call back the hawk which has been let fly. Yes, to cause something of the wild to return when it is called.

Call it reclamation or rewilding, the trend is a very positive one, ecologist and environmental scientist Pdraic Fogarty of the Irish Wildlife Trust says. It has enormous potential. Ironically one of the barriers to it is that its too cheap and too easy. Nature just needs some time and space. This goes against our need for immediate results.

Fogarty has a cherry tree in his garden that found its way there. But outside his house this morning, three tractors have been cutting acres of grass in the Dublin estate where he lives, obliterating any chance of another bird-sown cherry seed making it to treedom. We need to reverse the mentality around mowing, and mow only the places where people want to play football or picnic, he says.

The National Pollinator Plan has done wonders for making people look at things differently, Fogarty says. Public spaces offer an institutional opportunity to make spaces where trees are allowed just to grow themselves. Deer fencing in the Phoenix Park would allow areas to become forests.

Theyre still planting non-native trees in the Phoenix Park, Fogarty says. Its his nearest park. They say the Mediterranean oaks are being planted to replace veteran trees as part of a managed landscape, he says. But, should we be keeping the park absolutely identical to what it was in the 1700s?

We talk on the day that the EU has announced a plan to plant three billion trees. As part of Project Woodland, the Irish Wildlife Trust has been consulting on the next forest strategy for Ireland, due to be published soon. The key question, Fogarty says, is how we are going to meet some of the targets. Natural regeneration where trees seed themselves could help to re-establish native woodlands with a power and speed unmatchable by our efforts. The idea that we need to plant three billion trees is so human-centric. What we need to do is establish forests, large areas of forest and a lot of that needs to be undisturbed.

Cyclists enjoy the wildflowers along the Dodder Walk in Rathfarnham, Co Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

In rural areas it is not as simple as doing nothing to allow land to rewild. On peat lands we need to block drains. There is a need to fence farm animals out of areas and cull deer populations. We are making some progress. The new CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) is allowing farmers to rewild 30 per cent of land, but this is only applicable to farmers who have fields. Commonage areas, which may have much more potential, are not part of this plan.

There are some rewilding projects that provide more; not just biodiversity benefits but also powerful carbon sequestration. Healthy bogs, particularly healthy raised bogs, will take carbon out of the air forever, compared to forests which store carbon for 100 years.

Fogarty believes the culture war over forest projects is overstated. In the surveys and public consultations there has been huge public support for forests. What people hate are the commercial plantations, cliff faces of conifers clear-felled to leave devastated ecosystems in their wake.

Fogartys advice to anyone wanting to wild their garden is to make space for wildlife and enjoy what arrives. You dont have to be an absolutist. He has a resident family of sparrows and a crowd of starlings as regular visitors. Ants live under the elder that seeded itself. They all feel a little like part of the family.

Rewilding has been a really positive story. People can see with their own eyes, Fogarty says. And what they see is the power of an intelligent system.

Nature is healing became a consoling idea of the early days of the pandemic, when we marvelled at crystal clear waters in Venice or foxes on deserted city streets. The idea blossomed, and then quickly withered into a jokey meme. But the experience left its mark, and leaves us more open to ideas of rewilding public spaces than we have been for generations. We have the solutions, Fogarty says. One of them is the leap of thinking about how to align with natural forces, to see and believe Im part of this system. Now I dont have to control it or dominate it.

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The great rewilding: 'How amazing Ireland would be if we were covered in our own plants?' - The Irish Times