Buffalo grass: Desert Sod
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Posted by Robert Dailey May 27, 2007 |
Buffalo grass (Buchloe dactyloides) is tough, resilient, drought-tolerant and grows well in the alkaline soil of the desert.
It won'tt create a lush lawn, but it will act as a great groundcover for your garden, and, if you are like many desert gardeners, you can live without a lawn anyway.
When I moved to the high deserts of New Mexico, I gave away my lawnmower because I did not intend to have any lawn to cut. I either planted native grasses, had the birds and other animals do it for me, or used some gravel mulch to hold water and help native grass seeds (that may have been dormant for a hundred years) a change to sprout.
Buffalo grass grows to a height of between four inches and a foot tall, with four to six inches being about the norm.
It creates such a dense mat that the early pioneers used to build sod houses.
This grass adapts well to dry, desert conditions. In heavy droughts, it will dry out and go dormant.
It likes the sun, and does not do too well in shade.
This is a warm-season grass, so it should be planted between the first of March and mid-July. The foliage is somewhere between green and gray. It has a fairly deep root system. If you must mow, do it very infrequently, and don’t cut it to less than three inches tall.
Once the grass is established, give it some nitrogen fertilizer about once a month (six oz. per 1,000 square feet – or use a spray system for liquids). If you care for it, buffalo grass will repay you by being a very attractive turf or groundcover.
I would not recommend planting freshly collected seed. If you plant the seeds right after collecting them, you may get about 10 percent of them to germinate. Rather, scarify them first. Once that is done, the germination success rate goes up to 75%.
If you buy buffalo grass seed, it probably has been scarified already.
How much seed will you need? Two pound should suffice for a 1,000 square-foot area. With proper watering and fertilizing, you should have a pretty dense, sod in a couple of months.
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