Watching Grass Grow : Week 16 Water Saving?

The main claim that attracted me to the UC Verde strain of Buffalo grass was the claim that it would require less water than Bermuda Grass after it was established.

Here it is, 4 months after setting out the plugs. It's a lawn, it's green, and it's not stressed by the temps hovering near the 110°F mark. It was 112° when I took the picture and scurried back onto air-conditioned safety.

And how is the water consumption? Keep reading. I updated the calculations, and it's using less than I thought it was.

Every sprinkler system is a bit different, so the first thing to do is measure the water delivered in 15 minutes. It's the "tuna can" method explained here. Small pet food cans also work. Any container that is flat-bottomed, straight-sided, and a couple inches deep will do.

Lawn Water Calculator for Phoenix. The tuna can method will also reveal any over- and under-watered spots.

After measuring how much water was in each can, I entered the measurements into the calculator. The calculator is based on watering every third day - not optimal for Bermuda, but many people have a problem watering less often. At least it's better than watering every day.

According to the calculator, if the lawn were established Bermuda, It should be watered for 15 minutes every three days. I'm watering 15 12 minutes every four days, which is only 75% 60% of the water recommended for Bermuda. Already! YAY!

The lawn is not mature - the vendor of the Buffalo grass told me it will use less as the root system goes deeper. He also said that UC Verde is the only one of the buffalo grass cultivars that truly thrives in heat. That's good, because Phoenix has had temperatures mostly above 105°F for the past couple of weeks and there's no relief in sight.
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Watching Grass Grow Week 15: Turf, I haz it!

Wow, give buffalo grass a week or two of 105°F+ (over 40°C for you metric people) with Arizona monsoon humidity and it turns into turf! Real, fine-bladed grassy lawn kind of turf!

The annual weeds are quitting faster than an Alaskan governor, and the Bermuda grass is ducking for cover like a politician caught hiking the Argentine trail. Even the spurge is being displaced.

I am watering every 4 days, which is enough to keep an established Bermuda grass lawn alive, and the UC Verde buffalo grass is green and looks and feel like a LAWN!

Even the small area that is getting less than half the water as the rest of the lawn (because the sprinklers need adjusting) is still looking like lawn. It's clearly drought-stressed, but not dead, and I fixed the sprinkler problem. It's still turf, just not tall turf.

I am hard to impress, but ... I'm impressed. If this could be sold as sod, it would be perfect, but 3 to 4 months establishing the plugs is a minor investment of time compared to the saving water and mowing time I'm going to be enjoying next year.

I'll point out where I screwed up establishing the lawn in a later post.

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Watching Grass Grow and Be Eaten : Week 14

Buffalo grass passes the doggy taste test. The photo was taken a couple of months ago, and she still likes to eat the grass.



Like any grass, however, it does get brown spots if the dog urinates on it.
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Watching Grass and Weeds Grow : Week 13

Birds love my buffalo grass lawn, or maybe it's the weed seeds!

This are three species of Arizona doves. The tiny one is an Inca dove. They are often mistaken for the babies of other dove species, but they are just sparrow-sized doves. A mourning dove is at the upper right, and a whitewing is in the foreground. Whitewings are the biggest of the native doves.



The annual weeds are slowly being eliminated as I hand-pull them. After a section has been cleared of weeds, the buffalo grass is so thick that new ones can't sprout.

I wish I had used a pre-emergent, but it's too late now.

Bermuda grass is still emerging in a few places. Itjavascript:void(0) will continue to be a pest for quite a while.
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Watching Grass Grow Week 12: Baby's Second Haircut

The buffalo grass responded to the first mowing by sending out a lot of side growth and getting thicker, so I mowed it again!


Weaning it off water starts real soon, when the relative humidity goes up. Right now it's getting watered every other day, so I'll go to three days, then four, increasing the length of the waterings as I decrease the number.

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Watching Grass Grow Week 11: Baby's First Haircut

I wasn't planning to mow the lawn until after the summer rainy season started, but I noticed that the grass nearest the sprinklers was tall enough to block the spray. That gives it more water, it grows even better and it's a self-feeding monster.

June 3, before the mowing, showing the obvious clumps where the plugs were planted.



June 6, after mowing. There's not much difference, except that the highest clumps were shortened a couple of inches. The grid pattern is still obvious.


It's making nice turf in spots. The grass has thinner blades than Bermuda, and makes a softer lawn. It's easy to mow, not nearly as "juicy" as rye or bluegrass.

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Watching Grass and Weeds Grow: Week 10

This week I have some comparison photos. I took these by standing at the edge of the patio, with the camera pointed straight down.

March 24, 2009 is really wimpy. It's a few days after planting.

April 27, 2009 is not much better, and the weeds are sprouting.

May 21, 2009 is starting to look like it might be a lawn. The runners are criss-crossing the bare patches and starting to root.

June 3, 2009 shows it's getting dense and almost needs mowing in this spot. Not all of the lawn is like this, but most of it looks at least like the previous picture. This is only 2 1/2 months after planting the plugs at the maximum recommended spacing. There are a few weeds, but it's choking most of them out.

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Misfenestration: Word of the day?

You've done it, it's embarrassing, but you didn't know what to call it when you typed in the wrong chat window.

Misfenestration! If one can defenestrate, one can certainly commit fenestration wrongly and misfenestrate. Read more!

The Rest of the Garden

When I'm not obsessing over the lawn, I'm growing heat-tolerant, extremely productive vegetables like tomatillos, tomatoes, squash, chili peppers, eggplant, and okra.

Along with the lawn's watering system, we installed several lines for drip irrigating. Two lines are for the few landscape plants that aren't able to survive in Phoenix without a bit of supplemental water, and the rest are for herb and vegetable garden plots. Read more!

Watching Grass and Weeds Grow: Week 9

It's Memorial Day. I'm sitting in the shade with a beer! We had several cool, cloudy days with light rain, which is unusual for May, and now it's back to the usual hot and dry.

The Buffalo grass continues to spread, and weeding by hand is making slow progress. The grass is spreading and rooting under the spurge where the dirt is cooler and moist all day.

Pics are coming, I promise. Read more!