Harvesting Reed Canary Grass for Straw w/ a Scythe 1

Don't put your scythes away for the season just yet! Now is a great time of year to mow tall dry grasses for use as animal bedding, garden mulch, or dry matter for compost piles.

Reed Canary grass is my favorite dry grass. It's easy to mow and yields a tremendous volume of straw. At this time of year, the seeds have all fallen off, and since it's a dominant monoculture, there aren't many other plants mixed in, so it makes a great seed-free mulch. When harvested in dry weather, it requires no further drying, and you can put it directly in a haystack, or pile it high in your barn or chicken coop for winter bedding.

The big hollow stems are great for keeping air in a compost pile. So after you use it for bedding, the manure and straw mix is very compostable. It doesn't form a dense anaerobic mass (like hay or leaves do), that takes forever to break down.