Wait! Are you going to use herbicide against the bindweed and oxalis? Tilling just chops it into a million new plants all ready to grow.

I *still* have bermuda in my blue grama grass. Not much, thankfully and it's a small space where I can hand weed and hand apply glyphosate. You want to be sure everything is dead out there and then to minimize soil disturbances afterwards, so that your desired plant seeds germinate and are the majority plant versus weeds.

Everyone told me soil prep, soil prep and I just went ahead because I was seeding a warm season grass and I had to get it in NOW. If I could do it again I would water daily for a week or two and spray a last time with glyphosate because just so many weeds germinated - and I didn't even till! All I did was water the newly planted seeds and, wow, stuff grew. Everything. Blue grama is *very* vigorous though and it established fine.

If you want to use the winter rains to help establish your plants, you can still do that after mowing and maybe tilling now. But wait for the first few rains to germinate the weeds, spray them and only mow, taking away all the cuttings. Then seed and I think you'll have better luck!

(Sorry to rant, I did a heck of a lot of weeding, ugh.)

CJ

Oh, bermuda -- I forgot all about the bermuda. Yes, I have some of that too.

CJ, I have sprayed RoundUp twice this year. Right now the half acre look like scorched earth with a few persistent weeds cropping up here and there. Our instructions are to plow and even the soil ONCE, then water well, and use RoundUp again. Then in November we plant the seed and keep it well watered until we can count on the rains to take over. Next year we are supposed to use pre-emergent for the annual seeds and broadleaf herbicide for the perennial weeds. This seems like a lot of herbicide for a person who only reluctantly used RoundUp on poison oak until this past year. I comfort myself with the thought that when all this is done, I'm unlikely to ever need it again -- except for the poison oak.

I think I remember us discussing native grasses for California about a year ago. It sounds like you are pretty happy with your blue gramma. I am planning an especially drought tolerant strain of fescue for my shady areas, and dwarf Junegrass for the sunny places. According to the vendor, they look best with once-a-month watering (which I will do in years when the rainfall is plentiful), but once established will survive with no summer water (which is what I will do in drought years).

Now to find the person to plow the area...

Paula

Be sure to try Yerba Buena in Woodside for plants, seed and coaching. Nice people, great native nursery.

Here is a link that might be useful: Yerba Buena Nursery

I'm so glad I visited this site!!!!! Paula...where are you getting your June grass seed? We want to hydroseed but may have to delay a couple of months because of the cost!!!!!
We WERE going to order from Rana Creek. We have about 1/3 acre to seed and it is .07 cents a sf for hydroseeding, plus the cost of the seed. At this point I'm pretty sure all we are going to end up with is WEEDS. We have "scraped" all of the wild mustard and various spring annuals off but we have not applied any herbicides. (I am trying to stay organic - we are planting near a stream). Any and all advice would truly be appreciated!!! Could you use a "rented" tillar so that you don't compact the soil too much by having a tractor plow it up again?

Tressa, we got our seed from Rana Creek. They seemed very knowledgeable. We are planting it ourselves. We know someone else who did this and has had good results.

When our clay soil is compacted in the summer, most tillers just bounce on the top, scratching a bit. A really heavy tiller could do it, but is dangerous to manage on the slopes.

We finally did find someone to pull a heaby duty tiller by tractor, and it worked beautifully. My husband and I raked and removed larger stones. That alone was a huge job, and we still have piles of rocks to remove. For a month now I have been watering, and I'm starting to see weeds germinate. Considering that I killed off all the weeds earlier this summer, I am seeing an amazing crop of weeds! It proves the truth of what we are told, that there are countless seeds just waiting to spring forth. I plan to encourage as many to germinate as possible for another month, then spray, then in December spread the seeds. I am hoping for a rainy winter.

However I did come across a website that had directions for planting native grass without using any herbicide. I can't seem to find it anymore, so maybe it is no longer available. You're not going to like it much. It takes much longer and is way more work. What they said to do is plow, then germinate, then plow, then germinate, then plow then germinate, several times for at least two or better, three years. What you are doing is exhausting the seed bank in the upper level of the soil. There are billions of seeds there, so you can see that this is a tedious procedure.

I think you will have to do something about the weeds or you will end up with weeds that have some native grass mixed in with them. I suppose you could start with a smaller area and hand weed the broadleaf weeds -- which would be a job I'd be unwilling to take on -- but I don't know how you'd ever get rid of th exotic grasses.

Good luck what ever you decide to do.

Paula

Tressa, I just found the site with the tilling approach after all! Here is the URL.

Paula

Here is a link that might be useful: Restoring native grassland

Paula.....thank you SO MUCH...great site. I truly appreciate your response. Can you let me know how you project progresses?

Paula,

Just checking in! Did you seed? How is your site doing? Now that the CA rains have started how are things going?

CJ

from experience:
steps... 1) use seed only in a very specific cercumstances... mostly it will not work will for you, cheap it is, but work it ususally doesn't. First you have to get rid of all the current weeds... on a slope i do suggest (hate to) Roundup.
2) Wait ten days of the growing season then pull or hericide the reamining weeds,and mow to within a .5 inch of the surface.
3) Wait one good growing month, and water well (to grow seeds) then go at it again with Roundup.

4. Then cover the whole slope (tilling first if you want) with at least 2.5 or 6 inches of compost. Or two inches of sand and then compost or sand/compost mix.
   5-to Then buy bare root grasses (ususlaly the best bet but can be done only at certain times of the year) or 2.5 to 3 inch liners (a liner is a pant in a flat of small pots). 6- Plant these, wait one three weeks and then put down the correct pre-emergent to supress new weeds (or plan on weeding by hand one hour per day (per thoushand sq feet) for the next three months tapering off after tha depending on how fast the grasses grow in... be very careful of the pre-emergent you use ... ask an expert.
   hydroseeding can be very helpful in this work.
   This way, in one year or two you will have a solid slope of the grasses you want without weeds and with little future care.
   or if you are going to use seeds not in a hydroseeding, look at it like you area farmer and are plowing a new field and going to sow wheat... guess what, no farmer would get a pack of wheat seeds that tell him to proceed like those silly packets of wildflower seeds... it is a big job...