songbird wrote:

i was wondering about what you were calling
yellow flowers alfalfa as i'd never heard of
that before. glad that confusion is figured
out.

There are yellow-flowered cultivars of alfalfa,
usually called medicago falcata, or Siberian alfalfa.
I still don't know what the yellow flowers are, but
on close inspection the leaves are slightly more rounded
than those of the alfalfa

it may take more time to get established or
just be too arid for it to get going without
irrigation (or both). i didn't see any blooms
on the alfalfa i seeded in one summer until the
following year.

I hope you're right!

if you have snails, slugs then you have a lot
more moisture than i was figuring... hmm, but
believe me they are not usually a problem with a
field as the other creatures will eat them (snakes,
frogs, toads, lizards, etc.).
The climate here is Mediterranean, 19" rainfall in
a typical winter, this past year was only 10", but
irrigation is heavy. Frost a few times each winter
but no snow. Standard subdivision, single-familiy homes on
1/4 acre lots, mine's a little smaller. That really puts
a crimp on the small insectivores. No skunks, no possums,
never seen a mole or shrew. Lots of squirrels, some roof
rats, plenty of birds (all day active) so the snails,
slugs and whatnot have close to a free pass.


i would consider it a good sign that you have
all this life going on. no need to use chemicals,
if you want to cut down on snail and slug populations
then you need to get less moisture, which would mean
more frequent and lower trimming. which to me is
rather defeating the purpose of having a field of
such plants.

Here we do such things by turning down the sprinkler timer 8-)

i want them to grow, put down the deep
tap root, and then once in a while they get clipped
to simulate grazing and that pulse of roots dying
back and then regrowing, along with the nitrogen
from the decaying leaves and stems, well it all goes
to feed the worms and soil creatures and that is
visible after several years.

Your point about several years is well-taken. I'm
trying to gently shift a 50+ year old lawn to a new
paradigm. It isn't a quick project.

also, i'm not sure what the problem with pill
bugs might be, they tend to eat only decaying
organic matter or very ripe fruits that hit the
ground. not much else that i've noticed. i

The heavy irrigation common around here produces
loads of pillbugs, which do seem to attack certain
things. Clover survived about a week before disappearing
_during_daylight_hours_ when only pillbugs were seen to
be active. By that evidence I charge them....

of the patch posted to my website, but as of
yet... it's a winter or rainy day project...

still you can see some pictures of the patch
in question at the website www.anthive.com in
a few places (look for NE corner shots).

The place looks much wetter than around here, unless
you're irrigating at least an inch per week.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska