Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1869 — Water Grass. [ARTICLE]

Water Grass.

Editors U.vio.ni We wish to call the attention of the people to the Water Grass. Some people know it, others do not. Let those who do not, enquire of those who do, that all may know a most valuable grass. It is very sweet and nutritious, and makes most valuable hay. Horses, I know relish it, and feed on it greedily. As it is supposed, the common wild grasses—buck’grass, blue grass, Ac. —are much injured by continued raius, consequently there will be a deficiency in wild hay. It strikes me that the people can in a great measure remedy this defect by looking out in time, and taking care of this richer, and this year more abundant grass. This grass may have some weighty botanio name, (I have not looked for it,) but it is fitly called Water Grass, because it grows only on very low ground, or in wet seasons. The presumption is, the seed, which is abundant, lies, in the ground during all dry seasons, then when a wet one comes, like the present, it gets sufficiently soaked to sprout, and we find it oil most plowed lands, where the water lies most of the time. Look in your wheat, oats and corn fields, where these grjigs could not grow and you'

will b« apt to find it. It looks some like broom corn or sorghum, the tassel beuring tho seed, though it seems to stool or send forth a number of stalks from the same root. In favorable places it will yield a heavy crop, though it will be a little difficult to | cure on account of t’.ie size of the stalk, and the continued rains. But the rains may cease in time to save it as it is just now in blossom. It is suggested to my mind that this grass may he cultivated on wet lands every year, by collecting the seed in the fall and soaking it in the spring for weeks before sowing. I hope a number of persons will assist me in experimenting with this seed, to see if we may not make it a most valuable discovery. On a piece of wet ground I planted late corn; as it mainly drowned out I sowed II ungariuii grass; the rains continuing, it too, mainly perished, and now to my great graification I tipd Providence, who always shows a good head to the faithful laborer, is filling up missing places with a luxurient growth of Water Grass, eo between them all, I expect to get a fair yield of the best grasses. Corn, I believe, is classed with the grasses, and cut young and cured, makes an excellent hay. S. W. Ritchey.