Sunrise,Scenery, and Sunset

All right, how's this for a morning photograph?  I took it on the morning of December 24th, at 7:25 a.m. looking out my south window.   It's a frozen wasteland out there but the partial clouds make for a glorious sunrise, don't they?  This photograph is completely unaltered, with the exception that I took the picture below first, and then touched my finger to my Iphone on the garden garden area to change this second exposure to see more of the garden and a brighter sky.  

Which do you like better?  I was partial to the top photo with the contrast of the colors and the frozen ground, but the sunrise is more beautiful and the colors more vibrant in its "natural" exposure.  The first brings out the cold and frost of the brutal Flint Hills, the second displays the promise of the morning.  

Sunrise isn't the only time the colors of the Flint Hills help brighten my garden.  The russets of the bluestem and the oranges of the Indiangrass and switchgrass on the prairie are amplified anytime there is rain or moisture.  The buffalograss in the foreground and invading into the paths that I mow, stays the buff of this grass in winter, surrounding the house and biding time through winter.  

These two photos, taken during the rainy day of 12/29/2019, are more subtle in their coloring and hues, but nonetheless quite an improvement over the normal tan.  I cut the prairie low between the house and lower garden during winter for the purpose of deterring rodent migrations to the warm house and aiding the hawks that control them, but here the colors aren't nearly as amplified as in the taller mature grass in the background.  It's a trade-off I make every year as a tactical strike against the ubiquitous pack rats.

And then, there's the color of sunset on the prairie.  This panorama, taken at sunset on Christmas, 2019, shows the barrenness of the prairie in winter, yet the promise from the fleeting sun to return someday and green it all up again.  This garden, this gardener, hibernates until those first days of spring return.

In the meantime, I seem to be on a scenery sideline for this blog and I think for the next few weeks I'll return to the pictures of summer.  I've got quite a few "starter" blogs saved from last year's beauty that I want to share before "Gardening 2020" really gets rolling.  

Buffalograss III

So, for the person who wants to own one, what have I learned about caring for buffalograss lawns?  Who should have one?  How do you keep the weeds out?  What problems may develop?  What about watering?

As I've stated before, buffalograss is a low-maintenance grass, but not a no-maintenance grass.  When I first put it in, I followed instructions to wait until the average daily temperature was above 80F, I planted it in the correct concentration and then mulched it sparsely with straw to help conserve the moisture, and I kept it watered well.  The result was a thinly-covered piece of ground around the house that filled in pretty well by the end of the summer, but also developed more than a few weeds.  I controlled these by regular mowing in the first two years, but I didn't apply any extra water or fertilizer to the lawn.

By the third year, there were areas of the lawn that were unhappy and became sparse.  I wasn't able to find symptoms of disease as the cause, but resorted to applying a little fertilizer and watering these areas and even a dense-head like I am could tell that the grass loved the extra treatment.  So I've settled now into providing a nice bit of high-nitrogen fertilizer in early June, after the grass has greened and is growing well, at about half the rate recommended for a fescue lawn.  That seems to encourage it to keep a very dense, even turf appearance and helps it to be just a little more green.  And in the height of summer here, late July and early August, if we've gone several weeks without rain and the temperatures have been over 100F, then I have been known to give the front yard a little watering every other week or so. That keeps it from going entirely dormant and it will green up again quickly when the September rains hit.  Usually the right time to water is about when every one else in town is watering on a nightly basis and my co-workers begin complaining about their water bills.

Weed control is another aspect of buffalograss care that can't be neglected.  There are commercial herbicides that are labeled for use on buffalograss during the growing season, but I haven't used them.  Instead, I've been happy with a program of applying Barricade crabgrass preventer at the recommended time in early spring.  To control growing weeds, you can either burn the buffalograss each spring (see below), or you can spot-treat any weeds that green up (dandelions and other broad-leaf weeds) while the buffalograss remains dormant.  As long as you are sure the buffalograss is still dormant, you can use about any herbicide necessary, including Roundup.  Once the buffalograss greens up, I simply hand pull weeds or keep them mowed down.   As far as insect problems on buffalograss, I've never seen any.  My neighbor occasionally treats his buffalograss areas for what he was told was some chinch bug damage, but I'm not sure whether he actually has chinch bug troubles or whether it was just an excuse to sell him some insecticide.  He has a different variety ('Cody') than I do ('Tatanka') so it is also possible that I'm just too cynical about plant store representatives and  'Cody' is simply more susceptible to cinch bugs than 'Tatanka'.

And one last tip; buffalograss loves to be burnt annually.  When you think about it, that's hardly surprising since it evolved in the face of the frequent prehistoric burns that kept the prairie free of trees.  I believe that the removal of the dead understuff helps the grass to thicken up and it seems to green it up faster as well.  And the weeds that have started to grow simply hate being burnt and they disappear, never to be seen again.  Perhaps the positive effect on the buffalograss is merely a result of wiping out the competition, but I prefer to think that it is thanking me for recognizing its true nature and history.  Because buffalograss has a soul that you will recognize if you take it for your own.  As Todd Rundgren sang, "Like buffalograss, you crawled across my heart, oh like buffalograss wrapped yourself around my heart."

Buffalograss II

Buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) is described in the texts as a gray-green, fine-textured, warm-season grass.  Translation:  you're never going to get a dark green lawn out of this grass (so quit trying!) and it won't green up or start growing until the frosts end here in Kansas, usually around May 1st.   It is, of course, a major component of the short-grass prairie to my west and it thrives both south and north of the Flint Hills.  It is hardy from zones 3-9, and can be found growing naturally from Canada to Texas.

The native species grows 4-6 inches tall, with flowers that top the foliage slightly.  It is quite tolerant to drought and withstands some extensive repeated trampling by heavy quadripeds or bipeds. It is proclaimed as one of the "finest grasses for arid regions" in Greenlee's Encyclopedia of Ornamental Grasses. There are several breeding programs that are directed at decreasing the overall mature height and increasing the green-ness of this grass, in an effort to develop a perfect turfgrass that never needs mowing, but those goals are still just a far-off dream.  A major obstacle in the commercial acceptance of the grass is that this is a diecious species (with male and female plants), hence the formation of the flowers, and seeded varieties will always have the seedheads to mar (or improve depending upon your point of view) their appearance.  There are, however, female-only cultivars that can be established by vegetative plugs, sans flowers.  'Legacy' seems to have the lead in plug-grown varieties, while 'Bowie' is the up and comer for seeded types.*

Whether or not the flowerheads and subsequent seedheads offend your aesthetic senses tells a lot about the inner gardener in each of us.  Some gardeners will trim their buffalograss lawns at the first sign of a flower (usually these are old men with carefully trimmed topiary scattered around their gardens).  The same group will fertilize their buffalograss on a weekly basis in an effort to give it that "deep-green" look.  These people should not have started a buffalograss lawn in the first place.  At the other extreme are Birkenstock-wearing wild-eyed environmentalists (BWWEE) who think that the blue-green hue of the grass and the yellowish-brown seedheads were the carpet of the Garden of Eden, and who are prone to doff their clothes without warning and stretch out au natural on the sun-warmed buffalograss.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush tends towards the former and I must admit my sentiments lay towards the latter, so there is a bit of a marital clash on that point, thankfully limited to telling me to get off the lawn and go get some clothes on.  Lauren Springer-Ogden, touts buffalograss as a lawn in her book  The Undaunted Garden, and recommended placing small spring bulbs in the lawn to brighten up the beige appearance after winter.

A big advantage of a buffalobrass lawn, in my estimation, is that you can forever give up overseeding or patch-seeding.  Buffalograss spreads from rhizomes as you can see from the picture at the edge of my blacktop at the right, and it will fill in bare spots within a season if minimally cared for.  I've had large areas develop sparse grass in my buffalograss lawn, especially when I was learning to care for it, but they are easy to entice the grass to fill in with a minimum of treatment and fertilizer.

By the way, you may be wondering, is it "buffalograss" or "Buffalo Grass" or "buffalo grass?"  I don't care and the sources I've looked at all are different.  The latter two don't look right to me, so I'm sticking with buffalograss.  Just don't call it buffalograss to an Aussie, because they will think you're talking about St. Augustine grass.

Somewhere out there, this grass will continue to grow in acceptance despite the clamor of all those who want us to grow fungus-ridden Kentucky Bluegrass here in the arid Plains.  I'll never forget standing in line behind a priest several years ago at a very large and well-regarded local nursery in Topeka and listening to him ask a clerk about how to start a buffalograss lawn.  His thought was to decrease the mowing and care needed by the volunteers of the church, a worthy goal in my estimation.  The know-it-all clerk told him that it was too wet in Topeka to grow buffalograss(!) and what he really wanted was a K-31 fescue lawn and she proceeded to sell him a large bag of K-31.  And here I was behind him, just dying to blurt out that I had a buffalograss lawn, and a decent one in my eyes, just a scant 50 miles west.  I kept my own counsel, but a small part of me has always hoped that the clerk's soul shriveled up a bit at her act of buffalograss denial in front of the priest.  

Buffalograss Brief

All this time I've been blogging and I've never really written about my buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides) lawn.  I'll try to rectify that situation right now, as well as provide (perhaps in part III) a few tips for the gardener who wants to own one.  And I think, while I'm writing about this great native grass, I'll just declare these next couple weeks "Native Prairie Weeks" on Garden Musings and also write a few blogs about the native wildflowers that are beginning to bloom in my yard. Stay tuned, friends.

If you are building a house out on the Kansas prairie, planning for a buffalograss lawn makes simple sense, as well as having a  certain nostalgic charm.   I mean, it's Kansas, right?  Pictures of buffalo over the prairie in the movie "Dances with Wolves" should be running through your mind.  In fact, my "lawn" now has a split personality, with the immediate 30 feet or so surrounding the house a named commerical buffalograss variety and the other 90% of my lawn is, or at least was, mown native prairie.  I've noticed over the years that as I keep the prairie area mown down, more and more native buffalograss has moved in, to the point where about 30% of the grass everywhere is buffalograss.

But what kind of buffalograss did I want, and how to plant it?  Many new buffalograss varieties are established by the planting of plugs, and I had little patience or energy to plant hundreds or thousands of plugs in my landscape.  Fortunately, a search located Stock Seed Farms of Murdock, Nebraska, a retail outlet that specializes in native prairie flowers and grasses.  At the time, they offered 'Cody' and 'Tatanka', two seeded varieties of  buffalograss developed by the Native Turf Group in association with the University of Nebraska.  'Tatanka' was supposed to green up a little earlier, so I chose that for the lawn of my immediate house, and my neighbor chose 'Cody'.  Establishing my lawn was a breeze.  The ground was already cleared, and I simply waited for mid-June, seeded it, threw down a little straw for a light mulch, and began to water.  Up came the buffalograss, and by the end of the season, I had a decently dense buffalograss lawn.

For the gardener contemplating a buffalograss lawn, I've three important things to tell you right off.  First, I love my buffalograss lawn and wouldn't trade it for the world.  It doesn't need to be mowed as frequently as most other turfgrasses, and I rarely give it extra water except in the worst of Kansas summers.  If you like the fine texture of bluegrass, then you'll be amazed at buffalograss.  My children have always loved the feel of walking on it barefooted; soft and very dense.  Yes, it fades in the fall to a nice buff brown color, but the color is very even-toned and pleasant, and your mowing ends with the first frost.  I also love how it fills in bare spots;  no over-seeding or spot-seeding necessary, just apply a little more water and fertilizer to the area and soon the buffalograss will fill in. 

Secondly, if you're going to grow a buffalograss lawn with the intent of mowing less frequently, then I recommend that you should obtain the agreement of any spousal units beforehand.  I probably wouldn't mow my buffalograss at all, except that She Who I Must Obey (Mrs. ProfessorRoush) doesn't like the seedheads which pop up about every two weeks;  so of course I'm on a two-week mowing schedule.  Still, that's twice a week for about 5-6 months, much less frequently than a cold-season grass would require.

Lastly, while a buffalograss lawn is  LOW maintenance, it is not NO maintenance.  To keep its best appearance, my lawn has taught me that it does like to have some fertilizer and a little help keeping the broad-leaf weeds and crabgrass out.  It doesn't require watering often, but it can use a little water if the summer heat of July and August go on a little long while the rains stay away.  And it responds enthusiastically if you burn it once in a while.  But I learned my lessons well and a former turf grass expert once told  me that I had the best stand of buffalograss he'd ever seen.  I won't say that I actually crowed, but a peacock would not have out-strutted me at that point.

I'll discuss the species Buchloe dactyloides in Part II and provide some tips and some specifics on buffalograss care in Part III.  In the meantime, visit the Stock Seed Farm site link above and view the propaganda there.  I warn you, it will suck you right in, particularly if you read it on a sunny 95F day when you've just mowed your fescue for the third time this week.