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Organic Gardener's Composting by Steve Solomon
page 81 of 245 (33%)
nutrients. In fact, spring grass may be as good an animal feed as
alfalfa or other legume hay. Young ryegrass, for example, may exceed
two percent nitrogen-equaling about 13 percent protein. That's why
cattle and horses on fresh spring grass frisk around and why June
butter is so dark yellow, vitamin-rich and good-flavored.

In late spring, grasses begin to form seed and their chemical
composition changes. With the emergence of the seed stalk, nitrogen
content drops markedly and the leaves become more fibrous,
ligninous, and consequently, more reluctant to decompose. At
pollination ryegrass has dropped to about l percent nitrogen and by
the time mature seed has developed, to about 0.75 percent.

These realities have profound implications for hay-making, for using
grasses as green manures, and for evaluating the C/N of hay you may
be planning to use in a compost heap. In earlier times, making grass
hay that would be nutritious enough to maintain the health of cattle
required cutting the grass before, or just at, the first appearance
of seed stalks. Not only did early harvesting greatly reduce the
bulk yield, it usually meant that without concern for cost or hours
of labor the grass had to be painstakingly dried at a time of year
when there were more frequent rains and lower temperatures. In
nineteenth-century England, drying grass was draped by hand over low
hurdles, dotting each pasture with hundreds of small racks that shed
water like thatched roofs and allowed air flow from below. It is
obvious to me where the sport of running hurdles came from; I
envision energetic young countryfolk, pepped up on that rich spring
milk and the first garden greens of the year, exuberantly racing
each other across the just-mowed fields during haying season.

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