Organic Gardening Info from Peaceful Valley

We live up in Alturas, CA. A high desert kind of environment (5000ft) with annual rainfall at 12.42″. What kind of Native Grass/Grass would you recommend for our lawn that would be drought tolerant? Our current lawn takes much watering to stay green in the summer.

Thanks,

Anthony Hewitt

Cover cropping is a hot topic at Peaceful Valley right now! Wise farmers and gardeners are planting cool season annual legumes and grasses now in order to till in in the spring. It’s a cheap and practical way to add good nutrition and organic matter to the soil.

For the more poetically inspired, I came across a beautiful poem by Wendell Berry, an eloquent writer and careful farmer:

“Enriching the Earth”
To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air, and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind’s service,
for when the will fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death, willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
~~~~~~~~~~

If you liked that, you’ll LOVE “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
Here’s a snippet, “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.”

I used to scoff at lawns… I thought that a real, lush, soft, bed of grass was only possible with lots of chemical fertilizer and far too much water. Despite my past prejudice I decided last fall to give this organic lawn idea a try. So we dug up a small patch near our house, flattened it out the best we could, added Soft Rock Phosphate, CalCM+ Gypsum and Peaceful Valley Compost and tilled it together. We spread Tough Turf Lawn Seed at the suggested distribution rate once in fall, then again in winter and then one more time in spring. The reason for some of the extra seed was that we had some run off that would carry the seed away. But I would say that even without the run-off issue I would have doubled the suggested distribution rate (I really wanted a lush lawn).

A lush lawn I got! See for yourself:

This lawn was planted in the fall of 07, this picture was taken in April of 08… no chemical fertilizers used, just a little compost tea every other month or so. I water with a Gardena Hydro Fan Sprinkler for 5 minutes a day. I have to admit it turned out better than I thought it would… especially in the first year… now if I could get out of that hammock long enough to mow it (maybe next year).