Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 210]

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202 of situations, and is of fair quality for winter pasture or hay, if grazed or cut before reaching maturity. It is well worthy of more general trial. When once well established it seems able to hold it& place in competition with any other variety. For eight years past I have watched with interest its increasing vigor of growth in a thick and vigorous blue grass sod, on which some seed was accidentally dropped. Where sown as one of a mixture of six grasses and clovers, it is quite the most conspicuous at any time. I ha^e seen no grass which makes equally rapid growth following cutting, and none which withstands drought better. We have it growing in a small pasture, mainly blue grass, but in which there is considerable timothy. While evidently preferring the blue grass, we have not found either horses, calves or sheep refuse the orchard grass, unless it was allowed to approach maturity. Of other varieties worthy of further and more general trial may be noted the Tall Fescue (Festuca elatior), a rapid growing, early maturing grass, of good quality, and much liked in many places where it has been cultivated. Also the Perennial Eye Grass (Lolium perrene), a variety greatly praised by English writers, very productive and of good quality, apparently well adapted to our western soil; has done fairly well in our trials. Johnson Grass, (Sorghum halapense), very highly praised by some in the south, is not desirable for us. It is a very large, coarse grass, not certainly hardy in our winters, with its leaves and stalks killed at the earliest frost. We first tested this grass in 1885, sowing a bushel of seed sent us for the purpose by H. Post, Esq., of Alabama. The seed apparently failed to germinate. After some weeks the land was sown with Millet. A few stalks were found fully * headed at the last of August, but apparently very few. In the spring of 1886 the land was planted with potatoes. After cultivation of these had ceased, a considerable quantity of the Johnson grass grew vigorously in the rows, some stalks reaching six feet in heighth. At almost the first perceptible frost both leaves and stalksseemed entirely killed. Bermuda Grass (Cynodon dactylori) is another of the grasses1probably of great value in the extreme south, but of no use for us. in the north. Of course the annual grasses, the Millets, of which I prefer the German or Golden, for its much greater productiveness, and Hungarian grass are well worthy of more general cultivation not as main crops, but for sowing after an early ripening crop, or to be sown when there is probability of failure of other forage. They endure drought well, yield abundantly and can be harvested in from sixty to eighty days after sowing. In 1885 a small field of strawberries was plowed after the crop had been gathered, and the land sown with common Millet on June 29fch. August 27th the crop was cut, being in good condition for hay, the seeds being formed but not yet hardened. In 1886 Golden Millet was grown under like circumstances, the crop being fair but much impaired by drouth. Little gain comes from mowing either Millet or Hungarian grass until the seasoji is well advanced and the soil thoroughly