Its a warm season grass so the growth occurs in warm weather. If you can find the plants, you could plant them now from pot grown plants if you make sure to keep them moist until they establish some roots into the surrounding soil. Warm season grasses are growing vigorously right now. In that warm of a zone, fall would be fine if perhaps you are planning to order plants from Santa Rosa Gardens online, which is a great source. They will be back in stock then and you will have some time left for them to put out some growth before going dormant. They should really take off when it warms up next year. Its quite cold hardy and takes about 3 years to become large plants.

We've been getting so much rain this year that I have moved several volunteers of little bluestem, deergrass, blue grama, sideoats grama and pine muhly. All of these are similar types of warm season native prairie grasses like the 'Northwind' switchgrass. I pot them up in 4" pots after digging to let them adjust in dappled shade or morning sun only and after about 2 weeks they are moved into full sun and in about three days they are ready to plant with new roots that have filled the pots or sometimes I just directly transplant them and make sure the soil stays moist until they root in well (about 2 weeks).

This post was edited by TexasRanger10 on Thu, Jul 17, 14 at 18:11

I finally got mine planted here in early October. Curious how much and how fast they might grow yet this fall before 'winter' comes here.

Here is a picture of a row of Northwinds (the small guys in the middle of the picture) I planted last year. Anxious to see how fast they get going this spring. Does anyone in 8b have any experience with when these guys wake up?

{{gwi:2125668}}

Just starting to see a little growth at the base of my Northwinds planted last fall...