>>>> Do you grow it just to enrich your soil or do you let your horses graze on it in the winter? (I know nothing about growing hay, etc)
Ryegrass is for winter grazing. It's the legume-type forages (clover, lespedeza...) that are used to enrich the soils. We try to plant winter rye some years, and this is one of those years. The problem with planting it here, is that it needs to be planted in September or October, and those are often dry months. Often it won't germinate. We planted some a few weeks ago and it has germinated...but now there's no rain in sight, so I expect it may die. One year we planted it and it was so lush that I had to ration the horses' time on it! Managing grazing land is a crapshoot - I wish I had a crystal ball sometimes. We rarely plant ryegrass because the success is so iffy. We did this year, simply because hay is so scarce. Karen Thomas, NC
