fall bugs and foxtail grass

Something is eating all of the new beans as soon as they put their heads up - and is now starting to put holes in the purple hull pea leaves as well, apparently they aren't quite as tasty, but they'll do. I had expected the new squash plant to get eaten when it came up - as those bugs are still prevalent out there. But, I hadn't expected the new beans to be eaten as soon as they put their heads up. There are a lot of things nibbling on the beans but it has not done anything to really stunt those plants yet. I'm going to need to put chemical on the garden for the second time during the entire season... if any new bean is going to survive. Hmm...

And my one lonely cornstalk is up, from the one lonely dent corn seed I put in the ground. They are very viable.

I was collecting interesting seed from some grass out by the roadside. The closest thing I can find to it online is yellow or green 'foxtail' grass. It has small seeds in a fuzzy caterpillar like head. The seeds become dry and fall off at a gentle touch or can be coaxed off in a threshing like process. I collected a small tin of them. Then I read that dogs often get the seeds in their nose, eyes or ears and have terrible complications from sniffing and burrowing around in it. Our dogs were right there next to the grass - and didn't seem the least interested in it. I am on the fence about spreading it around behind our garden, which I was going to do because of it's interesting 'grain' like potential and the fact that we have quail and turkey living back there now. It is liked by wild game fowl as a food source - which I could tell just by examining it in the wild. I would hate our dogs to get a problem from lodging seeds in themselves - but they seem smarter than that. It might be different if there was a whole field of it...

I need to look into other grains at our co-op tomorrow. I want to get a grain crop that I can grow for chickens and other animals - but that could also be threshed without terrible difficulty to store, either for livestock or for an emergency food supply. It is always nice to have something on hand that has multiple purposes. I have found a few good sources to buy seed online if our co-op does not have the hull less varieties of the barley or oats that would serve as that multiple purpose grain. Hull less oats would be the best choice, because it is easily digestible by humans, dogs and other livestock and is a good keeper, as well. I was also thinking about sowing common rye grass in a few places only for the fowl and livestock. It would be nice to get some of that growing wild out there.