Day 21 after mowing. As expected, there�s lots of grass coming in now and taking over the field. This is going to make for a nice crop of biomass by summer's end. There�s actually still a lot of pea stems left out in the field too but they�re just getting browsed as fast as they can put back out any growth. Too many deer eating on too few acres. The most important thing to me right now though is that my field is productively putting out plenty of lush biomass with good color. The soil is becoming very productive.

This grass component that�s coming in now will be what makes the crop of hay that I�ll use to cover my fall seed mix. I was hoping by mowing midsummer that it would put my biomass around waist high or just slightly taller at planting time but its going to end up being whole lot taller than that I believe. If it does get chest high or higher then that�ll be a LOT of biomass to put down at one time as being thick as it is. Too much actually. It�ll be so much that it�ll smother out some of my clover and cereal grain seedlings and act more like weed suppression. Made that mistake last year and smothered out a lot of clover. If I get later into the summer and its as thick as I think its going to be�then I�m going to mow at a much taller height so as to put down much less biomass to the ground at planting time. The rest of the stems and stalks I�ll leave standing over winter and allow to begin decaying in the air. I�ll likely mow the biomass around knee high. As long as sunlight can reach my new seedlings I should be fine. We�ll get into that a little more in a few weeks though as fall planting gets closer and I see just how much standing biomass I have to deal with as well as how much is still remaining on the soil surface.



Day 10����.



Day 21����.