Woohoo! The Big Weed Is Done!

I've traded the last week of my gardening life (and probably the last cooler temperatures we'll see until September or October) for a weed-free front lawn.  As I sat on my hiney for 30 hours, more or less, carefully pulling out the crabgrass and other invaders, I had plenty of time to wonder if I'm truly just a crazy Luddite - or if I'm doing the environment (and us) a huge favor by handling a perceived problem the low-tech, non-chemical way.

Scene:  The front lawn, where the goal is a carpet of buffalograss. 
     The center of the lawn was plugged 2 summers ago during late July and early August, with half dead plugs of buffalo grass.  It has filled in nicely, but it still had some crabgrass and prostrate spurge that managed to come through this summer, probably at least in part because Greg had mowed it very low this spring to help it green up more rapidly.
     Along the edges and between the lower flower bed and the main body of the lawn, where there had been remnants of the old mix of fescue, Bermuda grass, and weeds, Greg added more buffalo grass plugs this spring, so those areas had lots of open soil this spring that had filled in thickly with weeds since then.

(Important note:  The back lawn, which was the first area we plugged two summers ago, is looking great and needs almost no weeding at all this summer.)

Conundrum the First:
     The standard way to manage a buffalo grass lawn after plugging is simply to mow it regularly at about 2" height.  Slowly, as the buffalo grass fills in, fewer and fewer weeds will germinate;  those that do germinate will be chopped off and stressed, allowing the buffalo grass to continue getting thicker each  year.  We could certainly do that, but I wanted a weed free lawn faster than that.  Greg really wanted a weed free lawn too.

Conundrum the Second:
     Why, in heaven's name, do I care about having a weed free lawn?  I've never worried about it before.  Mulling over this question, I realized I want to be able to choose not to mow the lawn at all, during the summer, because I love the soft, fluffy look that a buffalo grass lawn gets without mowing.  However, ANY weed shows up starkly in that situation, because the weed is almost invariably taller, stiffer, and/or a wildly different color of green than the softly undulating, gray green of the buffalo grass..
     Also of significance regarding this question of weeding, my weeding mantra ("One year of seed, 7 years of weed") kept running through my brain.  Any crabgrass or other weed that I allowed to seed into the lawn this summer would simply mean more weeds germinating in future years.

Conundrum the Third:
     Why not judiciously use an herbicide?  Although buffalo grass is notoriously sensitive to herbicides, there are a few that are labeled for it, and Greg keeps reminding me that "antibiotics" are occasionally necessary and useful.  But I just can't bring myself to use the darn things except against plants such as poison ivy - it would be too easy for me to keep justifying the tradeoff as far as time goes, probably leading me to a quick and rapid slide down a very slippery slope.  I also knew, though, that Greg would have no such qualms - and therefore I also wanted to give him his weed free lawn before he took matters into his own hands!

So, despite my periodic plunges into feelings of total ridiculousness over spending so much time WEEDING GRASS, for Pete's sake, I kept at it - and I am happy to report that the front lawn is now weed free (or, at least, as weed free as it's going to get this summer) and gracefully descending into dormancy as the heat and drought of another prairie summer take hold.

Ironically, I have no pretty pictures to share with you of my newly pristine lawn.  Did you catch the part about the lawn descending into dormancy?  That means that the photos I took this morning make the look dead - not the sort of image that inspires.  In person, the health and vibrancy of the lawn is obvious.  In a photo (at least, in MY photos), not so much.  So I'll share pictures after the next good rain, when the returns to its soft, gray-green beauty.

A final thought:  I'm not sure that buffalo grass is a good option for most American yards these days.  The cultural fixation on vivid green, crew cut carpets in front of each home - weed free and, often, actually maintained by a mow, blow & go crew - is simply not in sync with a buffalo grass lawn.  I can't imagine anyone else in this country being as...stupid?...stubborn?...dogmatic? as I've been to hand weed even a tiny area of lawn, and I can't imagine anyone in this country willingly and knowingly accepting a lawn that isn't weed-free from the get-go.  So, while I love our soft carpet of buffalo grass lawn, I can't really recommend it for others without pointing out its serious (to the typical American gardener/homeowner) limitations.

That said, I'm going to be thoroughly enjoying our soft, gray-green carpet of grass for the rest of the summer without feeling the need to mow or fertilize it and rarely feeling the need to water it.  I'm really glad that we made the switch to buffalo grass.  It was definitely the right decision for us.

Buffalograss Lawn, A Year Later

Last summer, at the end of June, there was a sale on buffalograss plugs at High Country Gardens.  Since our lawn was non-existent in the backyard and looking pretty awful in the front yard, I took the leap and ordered grass plugs.  Lots of grass plugs.

Right before they came, the weather turned gruesome, but when the plugs came we had no choice but to get them in the ground as soon as we could;  otherwise we'd lose the money I had invested in this native grass lawn.  With much groaning and sweating, we worked days (actually mornings) on end to get them all plugged in.  It took almost two months, two months that were ironically some of the hottest and driest on record around here, but we got it done.  I shared the initial results last year, first showing the back yard and then the front yard, as we got them finished.

One of the hardest parts about a buffalograss lawn is that it takes a while to fill in and, while you're waiting, the weeds tend to get a bit overwhelming.  This spring the weeds were driving me crazy, so I decided to treat the lawn like a flower bed and simply handweeded it.  I discussed the process, trying to justify the time to myself and others.  When I got the back yard buffalograss area done in May, I photographed it, noting that it was looking pretty good but still needed to fill in.

So here are the photos taken about 2 weeks ago, at the beginning of July, about a year after we plugged the back yard and about 10 months after we plugged the front yard.  We watered last summer, as the grass was establishing, but we have not watered the grass at all yet this year.

The back yard looks pretty good.  It's a little shaggy in this photo because it hadn't been mowed even once yet this summer when the picture was taken, so the runners were getting a touch long.  I did do a second, light weeding of the lawn back here in late May/early June to get rid of the summer weeds that were sprouting - there weren't too many, but there have been none at all since then.   The grass has filled in beautifully with no further effort.

The texture is wonderful -  very soft and inviting.  The color is not a bright green - but, hey, it's green without any watering!  (It's still green 2 weeks later, but I'm thinking it's about time to deep water it once.  Even buffalograss needs a bit of water occasionally to stay healthy.)  The only down side that I see is that "dog spots" are pretty noticeable - and when you have 2 large German shepherds, you do get lots of "dog spots."  The spots fill in again without any care on my part, but they leave the lawn looking patchy.

The odd shape of the lawn to the right, leaving bare ground around the birdbath and beyond, is due to heavy shade under a full, large green ash tree.  We tried plugging in High Country Garden's drought tolerant fescue here, but despite receiving the same care that the buffalograss plugs did, only about 4 of those plugs survived.  I'm probably going to make this area into a bed of some sort around the trunk of the tree (perhaps just mulch, but outlined appropriately);  meanwhile we're just letting the buffalograss move over as much as it wants, to see how much shade it will tolerate.

As I expected, the front lawn looks pretty patchy, even without dog spots.  Fescue and buffalo grass don't make good partners and we never consciously killed off the fescue.  I also never did do the second (summer weed) weeding on the front lawn.  Again, the density of the buffalograss is not bad, but it would have been nice to get it completely cleared out of weeds to see if it wouldn't stay pretty weed free after that.  I guess we'll get to compare the front and back yards to see how much difference it actually made to do that last weeding.

The green-brown clumps in the foreground and under the honeylocust are the leftover fescue.  We haven't watered this area at all this year either, so the fescue is looking stressed from lack of water...plus Greg has been mowing it very low to favor the buffalograss, which further stresses it.  Next summer it will be (past) time to kill off the fescue and start plugging in buffalo to complete the front lawn, but I'm pleased with our start.  It will never be the lush green of fescue, but I'm tickled with how well the buffalograss is handling both heat and drought, as well as how rarely it needs to be mowed.

In summary, would I do it again?  In a heart beat!  I'd try to pick a less awful time of year to plant the buffalograss plugs, but I am super pleased at how nice it looks and how easy it is to maintain.  In my column, this is definitely a score for buffalograss!  I might even come to enjoy the open space of a lawn around the house!