Winter Rye
lawn. Right about now is a good time to plant winter rye for zones 7 and southward.
Some people plant it just to have a pretty green lawn all winter. I like it for the following reasons:
1. Green food for
chickens and geese, also used to plant it for my horses when I had them. It is important to me to have some sort of fresh green food available to my animals all of the time.
2. I mow it and use the green grass clippings as mulch and green manure around the veggies in my winter garden.
3. Cover crop for chop and drop in the spring time.
I have heard people say that it will cause problems with your
perennial centipede lawn but I have not had that
experience. The front lawn, which is hubby’s ‘perfect golf
course lawn’ domain the centipede is thick and virtually weed free.
Application is simple – we just hand broadcast. A 50lb bag is cheap, we pay around $26 and that is more than
enough for the ¾ acre that we plant with rye.
For livestock we close off sections to rotate animals through. When I trained horses I usually had more horses than pasture leading to overgrazing. So I always kept at least one very small paddock in winter planted heavily in rye. Each horse went into the paddock at least once a week for a little while to get some fresh green grass. In our sandy area I felt that this was the best prevention for colic.
And then there's looks. My husband just loves the fact that it looks like a golf course in winter (groan).
