Seed Drills and More

Small acreage or large, the District has the seed drill to meet your needs. Our LandPride 606NT no-till seed drill plants a 5.5-foot width. With three seed boxes, it will accommodate large grain seeds, small legume seeds, and fluffy native warm-season grass seeds. Landowners with tractors of 30-40 horsepower and rear hydraulics can rent the drill from the district and get their seeding projects completed on a schedule that meets their needs. The drill can easily be towed behind a pickup truck for travel to and from sites. The rental rate is a $100 check-out fee, plus $10 an acre.

grass options include side oats gramma and prairie dropseed. Both are wispier than little bluestem, stay much shorter, and the grass blades tend to droop outward, creating a good cover for birds.

When choosing native flowers, it’s always important to consider structure, bloom time, color variation, and height. This is a limited list and all of the species listed below do well in a garden setting. For ground cover, rose verbena has columnar pink flowers and sprawling leaves that smother weeds before they can come up. Flowers in the 6-18” category include Lanceleaf Coreopsis and Black-Eyed Susan; both are bright yellow with dark centers and can bloom for the entire growing season.

In the 1-2’ window, a lovely option is Butterfly Milkweed. The milkweed family is the only egg host for the Monarch Butterfly and the blooms can be any color from bright orange to butter yellow. Moving vertically, Echinacea and Monarda occupy the 3-4’ space and generally have purple flowers. Both provide important nectar and pollen in the summer and shelter in the winter. Echinacea is more spender with long stems holding just one purple flower. Monarda grows in a more dense clump with a shower of light purple flowers at the end of each. The tallest plant that I will recommend today is the lovely Sunflower. The state flower of Kansas has many species to choose from and comes in a variety of heights from tall to extremely tall. This will be a late summer bloomer that provides food for birds throughout the winter. One more element to consider in a garden is a shrub, and we can again look to the prairie for inspiration. White indigo is a native plant that emerges early in the spring and in the early summer blooms form in a white tower. The flowers mature into pods full of seeds that provide food over the winter.

If attracting more wildlife to your home sounds interesting to you but you don’t know where to go to find more information, there is a wealth of resources here in Douglas County, including many knowledgeable people. You can find me in the USDA office in Lawrence along with the local Conservation District. The K-State Extension Master Naturalists and Master Gardeners are also great people to reach out to with questions. There are many digital resources available for identifying plants and learning about what we have in Douglas County, www.kswildflower.org is a database with descriptions of and ranges for many of our plant species here in Kansas. I also regularly use the phone apps Seek and iNaturalist for identifying plants found in the field.

If you don’t have a tractor, the District has a smaller seeder. Perfect for small areas, the Dew Drop Drill is a small-scale seed drill/ planter designed to be pulled by an ATV or UTV. With a wide stance, low center of gravity, and large, aggressive tires, planting access is limited only by your ATV. The twin seed boxes can handle a variety of seed types, including but not limited to warm and cool-season grasses, small and large grains, wild-flowers, forbs, and legumes. The rental rate is $50 per day.

You may also need to purchase seeds to run through those drills. The District can meet most, if not all, your seed requirements and can sell individual seeds in bulk as well as seed mixes. Your order will often be delivered the same week it is placed. Please stop by the office or ask us to email you our seed order sheets for a complete list of seeds. All profits from seed sales are used to purchase and maintain equipment or fund our annual meeting.

We also have prescribed burn equipment, including drip torches, backpack sprayers, and flappers for loan, with a $50 refundable deposit. Contact the District at douglasccd1@gmail.com for more information.