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.  

June Native Wildflowers I

In yesterday's blog, I related that most of my yard is native prairie that I mow regularly, usually in portions on a every other week rotation.   This year, I'm trying to leave certain areas unmown, primarily so that I can enjoy the prairie forbs that pop up in those areas.  The flowers aren't as dense-packed as you might see on a calendar photograph, but there are enough of them to enjoy.    Many of my intentionally neglected areas are strips on the hillsides that will serve a dual purpose (other than for my aesthetic satisfaction)  as rain gardens to slow down and clean some of the runoff from heavy rains.  And of course, the unmown areas offer a third, selfish advantage;  they decrease my dreaded mowing time.

I decided to show you some of the June wildflowers blooming in these areas because of my initial excitement over a patch of Purple Poppy Mallow (Callirhoe involucrata) right next to the circle (okay, teardrop) driveway.  I've been mowing around it for several years while the Poppy Mallow blooms, then cutting it off again a month or so later because the blooming ceases in about a month and because a month is all I get before Mrs. ProfessorRoush starts to complain about the disheveled mess and forces me to cut it.  We are not entirely in marital agreement on our appreciation of the "natural" state of lawn.

The Purple Poppy Mallow blooms brightly and gloriously for quite some time during the summer and loves the hot dry summers of Kansas.  The blooms close each evening and don't open up till late morning, so if you take a picture or pass by a group in early morning, like the one on the left, it just looks like a patch of overgrown weeds and you might look at it and side with Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  Three hours later, this is a river of bright purple, a floriferous masterpiece, and nobody would have the heart to mow it off.  

Another forb that has been blooming in the prairie for several weeks now is the Blue Wild Indigo (Baptisia australis).   This one also comes in a light cream form (a different species, Plains Wild Indigo or Baptisia bracteata ) that usually blooms first and has already spent their beauty this year.  I enjoy the dark, black rattle-ly seedpods that form on the dried up stems of these plants, but saw my neighbor chopping off the blooming false indigo this weekend because he doesn't like the seedpods.  There's no accounting for taste, but at least he has a better appreciation for the fact that the sap of this plant turns purple when exposed to air. 

Throughout my garden beds, one native prairie plant that I recognize as a seedling and allow to self-seed wherever it wants is the Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa).  I've been amazed how often they pop up in a perfect place for display and that's good because they are nearly impossible to transplant anyway due to deep taproots.  These orange beauties have just begun to bloom and they will brighten up their areas for 6 weeks.  I now have 10 different self-seeded butterfly magnets in my garden.  They are all tough as nails, impervious to wind and weather and insects, and as drought-tolerant as you'd ever want.

Hidden in the prairie grasses, if you look hard for it, will be light-pink-purple bristly flowers of the Catclaw Sensitive Briar (Mimosa nuttallii).  What looks like flowers are actually the overpowering pink stamens towering above the tiny flowers.  Touch the stamens and they fold up into a small ball instantly.  Catclaw is an important indicator of prairie health as it disappears in overgrazed areas.

I've got loads of wildflowers to show you, so look for posts II and III later this week;  I think we'll do the yellows, and then the whites on different days.

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.

Missing Eden

Yesterday evening, making my nightly rounds through the garden, I came upon a full-blown mystery.  Several days ago, I had noticed that the bi-colored Meilland rose 'Eden Rose '88', also known as 'Pierre de Ronsard' or by its patent name, MEIviolin, had begun to open up its blooms for me.

'Eden Rose '88', 2 days ago, rain damaged,

You should be made aware that, although I've grown this rose for a number of years and although I've given it a prime south-west facing spot, I've just never been strongly impressed by this rose.  It may have been named "The World's Favorite Rose" byWorld Federation Of Rose Societies, but it just doesn't perform that well here in Kansas.  Oh, no doubt, I love the fully double bloom form with its creamy-white petals delicately ringed in pink.  But the bush itself has had no vigor or hardiness for me, dying back to the ground each winter despite my efforts to protect it.  And the canes of this rose seem weaker than most to the Kansas wind.   It was, in fact, the first rose to teach me to pinch off new basal canes before they reached a three foot height, less they be split at the base by a strong gust. It is supposed to be a short climber, reaching eight or nine feet tall, but I've never seen it top three feet before the wind or winter prune it back.  And finally, it is quite susceptible to blackspot late in the season, losing most of the dark leaves overnight if I don't keep my eye on it.  It often forces me to break my non-spraying ethics.

'Eden Rose '88' today, nipped in the bud

But, back to the current puzzlement, I noticed last evening that every single half-open bud of this rose had been clipped off overnight.  Not clipped off as if it had been properly deadheaded to the next outside-facing bud, but just the buds themselves had all been removed; at least all the buds that had been in the process of opening.  Even more perplexing, right next to 'Eden Rose '88', the plump buds of  'Prairie Star', 'Cuthbert Grant', 'Ballerina', and 'Louise Odier' were completely untouched, as was, upon further inspection the rest of the roses in my garden.  And worse yet, the next day the entire rose was trimmed down to about 6 inches, except for the 3 foot tall single cane at the right.

Why, pray tell me, did some wicked creature of the night single out 'Eden Rose '88' for its palate?  I cannot believe, as She Who I Have to Humor (Mrs. ProfessorRoush) hypothesized, that this rose was that much sweeter to the tastebuds than any of the others. I think that's about as likely as someone or something taking offense that 'Eden Rose '88' was actually introduced in 1987, a modern cross of 'Danse des Sylphes' and the pink and white climber 'Handel'  with 'Pink Wonder Climbing'.  Or something taking offense that the same rose-breeding family introduced another rose named 'Eden Rose' in 1950, a pink rose not to be confused with the modern climber.  There were no tracks in the area to help identify the fiendish culprit, so unless we are to blame a freakishly large hovering hummingbird, I am at a loss to even guess at a possible motive or suspect.  I did take the precaution of applying my standard deer repellant in the area (see this post).  I should take the destruction as a sign and spade prune this rose once and for all.  But there's just something about this rose......something that only an insane, crazed, night-pruning monster could love.