Well, it was a good thing that you went out and tried things. Is there someone you know who is extremely skilled at fire building? Sometimes an apparently difficult task can be much less difficult to master if a skilled person shows you how and then coaches you from here to sucess.

Some thoughts:

Wet grass is just one step above wet leaves, which are just one step above a wet sponge in my experience. Survey your surroundings and find better materials to work with - even prairies have woody brush and trees along aquifers and watercourses. Sometimes you have to get outside your first hand experiences; my paradigm in the upper Miss. Valley is trees trees trees - here's a trivial example of what I mean (with all the interesting bits amputated):

My Dad and I were in an extremely remote and rugged moutainous area of interior Alaska. We were several miles from camp, alongside the upper reaches of a glacier at the head of a steep erosion canyon just outside the lateral moraine. Dark was upon us and it was imprudent to return to camp for several hours (the moon would not be up until 6 hours later). An early snowfall had dumped a foot of wet stuff on everything the day before, and "everything" included the tiny little scrubby bushes that struggled out of the stony debris to the amazing height of... 8 to 10 inches. No trees - this was raw alpine terrain in the far north.

However, just before it got dark, I spied a seam of weathered out coal and lugged a cobble of it to where we were settling in. Raw, weathered out coal is not especially easy to light. I repeatedly bashed the cobble of coal on the stony ground until I had a double handful of small chips and flakes about the size and thickness of pistachio shells.

Dad and I gathered a hatful of woody stems from around us - as long as a pencil but much thinner. We stripped the bark from a handful, broke them, and pulled them apart. Laid a tiny fire and lit it, then quickly fed the rest of the twigs and the smallest chips of coal to it. Kept adding coal chips and in less time than it took me to type this, we had a nice small enduring fire of coal. (And we braised and ate one of our most memorable meals ever over that little fire)

That cobble lasted for the 6 hours it took to finish our business, wait out a drizzle, sky to clear, and moon to rise. Who thought of that? I don't remember - my Dad and I are a good team, so it was probably both of us. That was about 18 years ago and the only time since then that I have burned coal was a couple of years ago when my boys found a seam exposed in our backyard after a heavy rain (Rock Island Coal seam 2, I believe). So we made a small fire from it just so I could show them how Grampa and I did it. If we had relied on our upper MidWest growing up, Dad and I would have said, "Well, there aren't even any shrubs here, let alone trees - no fire for us."

The other thought (sorry for the windy post) is you said:

<< next i added some quick tab firestarters, they didn't spark up! >>

IME those light even after immersion. Did you fluff them up by pulling and teasing the fibers apart? Those are almost as good a starter as our homemade vasoline cotton balls (and a lot less messy). If I split the wood to matchstick thickness first, a quick tab will start completely wet and frozen wood on a cold January day.

But I can't teach anyone how to start a fire in good conditions in a BBS post, let alone in tough conditions. Hope this gives you a couple of mental tips and that you find someone nearby who can coach you. No telling who that might be - my wife shouldn't have any clue, but it would not surprise me if she could start a fire underwater. Unconventional approaches, but she never fails to get a fire going when the chips are down. Ask around.

Good luck and don't give up!

Regards,

Tom