[ToC] [Prev] [Next] Bluegrass Pasture/History

Subject: Bluegrass pasture/history
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 1995
 
Folks,
 
Please notice that when referring to my pastures, I always try to say
"bluegrass/white clover".  In my opinion, the combination of the two is far
great than the sum of the two.  As far as I know, they always occur
together naturally in Ohio.
 
Looking in a dozen + references, in every case the writer cautions that
bluegrass is is not productive in July and August.
 
But, my experience here doesn't reflect that.  I believe that the earlier
writers on bluegrass observed it under continous grazing conditions and
therefore with depleted root reserves. It seems like the same person wrote
the bluegrass section in all of my books.  They probably all quoted a
common source.
 
If the root reserves are allowed to recover between grazing,
bluegrass/white clover pastures at Owenlea are vigorous and productive
through July and August.  Our soil type is pure clay with no sand or silt.
The level of organic matter is very high.  Our soil has very good water
holding capacity.
 
It seems to me that bluegrass/white clover is one of those rare fortunate
circumstances that come along in life.  It's just exists here in Ohio, in
the same way that air and rain are here in abundance.
 
I have never planted bluegrass/white clover.  I don't believe that you
could buy seed that would duplicate the results we get from the native
adapted varieties.  I am guessing now, but I suspect that every soil type,
every county and every valley have a adapted sub-variety that evolved there
and fit the special conditions of each small area.
 
In my opinion, The best way to get good bluegrass/white clover pasture is
to plant any grass or legume, graze it close for 2 to 5 years and let
nature take it's course.  There is probably enough viable bluegrass/white
clover seed in any soil in Ohio to last until the next ice age.
 
Extending the logic, I would never plow as preparation to plant a pasture.
I would just manage what was available(weeds etc.) until it became a top
quality bluegrass/white clover pasture.  I believe that the only reason to
plow a pasture is to achieve a "mowable" surface.
 
I have seen bluegrass/white clover in Ontario, Canada (right across the
lake from here), New York, PA, West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana,
and Ilinois.  I once spent spent a week trying to buy a farm in Wisconsin.
I decided that brome filled the same slot in Wisconsin, that
bluegrass/white clover does in Ohio.
 
Following is a brief history of bluegrass/white clover in Ohio from the
book "History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880" by Robert Leslie Jones. At
the time referred to there were only a handful of permanent white residents
in the Ohio interior.
 
begin quote--------------------------------
 
When Christopher Gist was in the Miami Valley in 1752, he noted, as he had
done earlier in what is now Kentucky, that the bottoms were "full of white
Clover wild Rye and blue Grass.  White clover and bluegrass were not
indigenous to the Ohio Valley, though many popular writers have claimed so.
Beings "aggressive" plants, they simply may have spread westward with the
advance of settlement from the seaboard communities where they had long
since been introduced from Europe.  Most likely they were brought from
Canada into the Midwest by French traders and missionaries and the
colonists of Detroit, Kaslaskia, and Vincennes.  In any case, the earliest
American pioneers, accoding to William Renick, found bluegrass "growing
most luxuriantly on the Lancaster prairie" and "in various other places . .
. by the hundreds of acres in one body."  On the Darby bottoms, opposite
the site of Circleville, there were supposedly a thousand acres of it.  In
the 1790s the seasonal cattle pasturers from Kentucky gathered the seeds by
the bagful on these bottoms to take home with them.  There was then
apparently very little bluegrass in the wooded parts of the state.
 
end quote-------------------------------------
 
Another source claims that bluegrass and white clover preceeded the first
settlers by about 100 years.  The writer asserted that the seed was carried
in on the wind and by birds.
 
Kindest regards,
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@      F. W. Owen                  @
@      Owenlea Holsteins           @
@      9430 Spencer Rd.            @
@      Homerville, OH 44235        @
@      216/625-2369 voice & fax    @
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