Overview and growing conditions

Prairie dropseed is a grass that is native to North America. It is a warm season grass, meaning that it does its growing in the summer. It needs full sun and is drought-tolerant once established.

Season of interest

Prairie dropseed is a lovely, delicate green grass that moves gently in the breeze throughout the summer. In the fall, it sends up tan seed plumes that look especially gorgeous when they catch setting sunlight. They die down and disappear over the winter.

How easy is it to care for Prairie Dropseed?

Overall score: (10- extremely easy). Prairie dropseed is pretty durable. It can handle sun, drought, and even survives some standing water. I have a strip of dropseed plants planted along the sidewalk in an area that plenty of neighborhood dogs visit, and I haven’t lost any of them after three years of them being planted there.

Problems with Prairie Dropseed

They are slow to establish, so you’ll want to consider how to manage weeds around them while they fill in. You can mulch more heavily, plant them closer together and plan to thin them later, or plan temporary other plants between them in their first few years.