Aug. 3, 2007

LUBBOCK – Texas Cooperative Extension in Floyd and Hale counties will sponsor a perennial grass workshop for South Plains producers on Aug. 10.

The program will run from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at two locations. Registration costs $10, including lunch.

"We will meet and begin at the perennial grass plots on the Eddie Teeter farm, three miles south of Lockney on FM 378," said J.D. Ragland, Extension agent in Floyd County.

That plot is a side-by-side comparison of buffalograss, sideoats grama, blue grama, switchgrass, Kleingrass, indiangrass, three types of old world bluestem, a blend of native grasses, and three types of bermuda grass. The trial plot is a Texas Alliance for Water Conservation project.

An overview of the grass trial will be provided by Calvin Trostle, Extension agronomist, and Rick Kellison, Alliance project director. Jim Bob Clary, U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service, will discuss perennial grass adaptation and selection.

The workshop will move to the nearby Muncy Center about 10 a.m.

Ted McCollum, Extension beef specialist at Amarillo, will discuss pasture productivity and cattle management on perennial pastures. Kellison will provide an overview of a integrated perennial pasture system.

Michael Dolle, Extension agent in Hale County, and Ragland will cover wheat pasture fertility and management. Trostle will provide and update on wheat grain varieties for 2007.

A question-and-answer session will follow lunch. Participants will qualify for 2.5 continuing education units.

For more information, contact Ragland at 806-983-4912, or Dolle at 806-291-5274.

Information on the Texas Alliance for Water Conservation and its cropping projects is available online at: http://www.orgs.ttu.edu/forageresearch/TAWC.htm .

Funded by the Texas Water Development Board, the alliance is a joint effort of Texas Tech University, Extension, the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District No. 1, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Agricultural Research Service Cropping Systems Research Laboratory, and several producers in Hale and Floyd Counties.