I haven't seeded any monostands of sheep fescue, so I'm not sure what it looks like. It's pretty easy to tell the difference between wheatgrass and KBG (even KBG that is newly sprouting from the roots/rhizomes). The natives will be much lighter in color than the KBG. A word of warning on the spots that have been going brown during drought. Streambank wheatgrass deals well with drought, but it does so by going in and out of dormancy easily. So if the streambank wheatgrass is the dominant grass, you'll still get some browning. The sheep fescue and western wheatgrass deal with drought by developing extensive root systems, so they don't go dormant as quickly. I've got sections of heckstrip that get almost no water at all from the sprinklers, which means almost no water from mid May through August or September, since we're pretty rain free then. The sprinklers probably hit those spots before the mailbox went in, but the mailbox (community, so I can't just get rid of it) creates a dead spot. The streambank wheatgrass grows there, but goes dormant. Western wheatgrass stays green, but I haven't been planting enough of it so far (from now on, I'm skipping the streambank and going with western). Near the end of the summer, I planted some blue grama, hand watering until it sprouted. It's been doing pretty well. I've read that it's normally a bunch grass, but that it can spread slowly at higher altitudes (I think that's comparative, so we'd count). I was walking the dog earlier today and walked by a section of mostly dirt by a highway. It obviously gets no water other than the rain and snow. There was a lot of dry grass, and some green that looked like it might be western wheatgrass. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the distinctive "eyebrow" seed heads of blue grama. I doubled back to make sure, and there were several tufts of blue grama, green without any water other than the rain we got the first week of June and the first week of September. I'm tempted to sow more grama throughout the lawn, but I want to wait to see how early it goes dormant, since it's a warm season grass. If it has a long enough season, I may start including more of it in my lawn.

Yahooooo!! I hope it blooms before the frost for you too! I have friends who are all going to a VERY popular dog show back east next week and they told me the weather should be great. The weather here is changing now---up in mt shasta they are getting ready for snow-we should be ok for another month or so---we get cold nights but wonderful sunny days--than the rains come, it's unreal like the rain forest-- days on end -makes the redwood grow! cole--deer watching and worring about the bananna slug!!! ugh!

It just figures that they'd flower so early. It is hard to prevent overwintered brassica crops from flowering early as they are biennials so that is their nature. Sometimes, if the very cold weather arrived in fall just after you planted them and they don't grow much, they can remain tiny and stunted all winter and start growing normally again as early as late December or early January. Sometimes when that happens, they might have time to make a crop before the daylength triggers bolting. I have had all sorts of mixed results with overwintered cool-season crops bolting. Sometimes overwintered Swiss chard will bolt, but other times it never bolts and lives for a couple of years. Sometimes overwintered kale bolts early but other times it bolts much later. I cannot necessarily find a reason, but think it likely is related to temperature and stress. My lettuce that sprouted voluntarily (from self-sown seeds from last year's spring crop) looks really nice right now, but from experience I know it will bolt at some point this spring. By then, though, I hope the new seeds I just planted recently will have produced plants large enough to harvest from instead.

To answer some questions: The chemicals I use are Daconil and a pesticide of my choosing....generally malathion. I fertilize usually at planting. I mix half a tablespoon to a tablespoon of pure nitrogen or a balanced mix around the area that Im about to plant. I put some in the hole too. I generally don't fertilize after that aside from once, maybe 6 weeks later. TAMU did no indicate what deficiency, but the fact that I am using mulch points to nitrogen deficiency since that mulch is decomposing. Its tying up nitrogen. Thanks for the pic of your plants. Your brussel sprouts look like they got a LOT bigger than mine. The image of the brussel sprouts I posted (with the roots) is a plant that was put in the ground in october. You got a LOT more growth out of yours! Maybe it was just a bad year. Ill note it in my excel sheet and take notes.