Watching Grass Grow: 6 Months Later

Six months into this experiment, I'm happy with the buffalo grass's performance. So are the quail.



There are still some questions about buffalo grass performance in Phoenix:

• When will it turn brown this fall?
• When will it green up next spring?
• How easy or hard will getting rid of the remains of the Bermuda grass be?
• How little water can it get and still stay reasonably green next summer?
• What will it look like with no mowing?

The claims that have been verified, at least in my lawn, are that buffalo grass needs less mowing and less water than Bermuda grass. I have mowed the lawn 5 or 6 times since it was installed, compared to the 4 or more times a month that Bermuda grass requires. It needs less water to stay green than Bermuda grass - 40% less in my experience, perhaps even less than that next year. Read more!

Tomatoes: The Second Season

I saw a 6-pack of locally grown Early Girl tomato seedlings at the big box nursery yesterday, which reminded me to remind you: We get another chance at killing growing tomatoes between now and the first frosts.

Here's the secret. Use varieties that can mature a crop in a very short time. Almost anything with "Early" in its name, or "short season" in its description will be able to grow, flower, and ripen fruit in the three or four months we have before a hard freeze. If it can produce fruit in a Montana summer (both months of it), then producing fruit during fall and early winter in Phoenix should be no problem.

The supposed "first frost" date is mid-November, but with a tiny bit of protection you can keep tender plants going until we get the big freeze that almost always happens in late December or early January.

Buy them as 6-12 inch transplants in six-packs and plant them in an area that gets a bit of afternoon shade now, or provide some shade with burlap, but pick an area that will be in full sun later in the year.
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Oh Rats! I have RATS!

See this woodland creature nomming on the mesquite beans by my barbecue? It's a rat! My dilemma is deciding whether it is a native rat or an alien species of rat. Should I feel flattered that I have created a welcoming micro-habitat or should I plan its demise?

The suspect imports are the wharf rat (Rattus norvegicus) or the black rat (Rattus rattus). Wharf rats have small eyes and ears, black rats have large eyes and ears. So it's not a wharf rat. Phoenix has an expanding infestation of black rats: wire-chewing, attic dwelling, flea-infested rats of the kind that was common during the Black Death.

The suspect native rodents are the cotton rat (Sigmodon arizonae) and the pack rat (Neotoma albigula). Both have big eyes and ears. Cotton rats have tails that are definitely shorter than their bodies, and Ratso here has a tail as long as his body. So it's not a cotton rat.

The hard step is deciding whether I have a black rat (very bad) or a pack rat (not so bad). The biggest difference between the two is that a black rat's tail is naked and a pack rat's tail is covered with short hair. From this picture, it's hard to tell.

More later, on the same Rat Channel.
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RAIN! OMG! IT'S RAINING!!!

Finally we're getting a summer rainstorm. (The summer rainy season usually starts in early July.) There were some out of season showers during the last week of May and then nothing for over two months but a few clouds, some virga, and just enough rain to make the windshield dirty. This storm looks serious.

If you see the arrows - that's the direction the storms are moving. When two (or more) storms collide, it can get violent. Read more!

Watching Grass Grow: Week 20 Confessing the Mistakes

This is the post where I point out my errors, hoping you won't commit the same ones.

The weather, and some lack of foresight on my part, made the conversion go less smoothly than it might have. None of the errors were serious - in only 3 months I grew a nice lawn - but they have created more work than was necessary.

NOTE: My planting schedule was constrained by having plants shipped from Nebraska - I was caught between their earliest shipping date and my desire to get the plants here before the Arizona heat set in and made it risky to ship them and miserable to plant them. This will be less of an issue for anyone planning now because there will be resellers in Tucson and Phoenix soon.

Bermuda Grass Control: I should have started Bermuda control the previous fall, because it wasn't quite out of dormancy when we planted the buffalo grass. The heavy watering while the buffalo was being established encouraged the Bermuda. Despite spot spraying and pulling, there are still some thriving patches of Bermuda in the lawn. Unless the two grasses go into and out of dormancy at the same time (still unknown), I'll be able to spray the Bermuda with glyphosate while the buffalo is dormant.

Killing the existing Bermuda will be especially important for anyone who is planting plugs into an existing lawn without having it stripped of old sod. It requires several applications of glyphosate done while the Bermuda is well-watered and actively growing to get a good kill rate.

Annual Weed Control: Applying broadleaf weed killers in Arizona is controlled by the temperature - despite being for "broad-leaved weeds", the herbicides will damage turf grasses if they are applied when it's too hot. Their definition of "too hot" means spraying weeds is not an option during most of the Phoenix weed-growing season.

I should have used a pre-emergent to control annual weeds. Hand-pulling got the worst of them, but it was extremely time-consuming. Applying pre-emergent this fall and next spring should get them under control.

Soil Preparation: The buffalo grass arrived the day before the sprinkler system was installed. Again, this would have been better done sooner than it was, to give me time to let the tilled-in compost settle, refill low spots along the sprinkler tranches, and for the first crop of annual weeds to sprout and be killed.

A lawn roller would have been useful before planting to make the soil firmer, and after planting to make sure the plugs were in solid contact with the soil.

I filled in the worst of the low spots and will touch up the levelling while the lawn is dormant.

Sprinkler Installation: I forgot to tell the installers to use 6" pop-ups, which means I have to mow the buffalo grass or it starts blocking the the water distribution.

Fortunately, they used sprinkler bodies that allow me to retrofit 6" popups without having to dig up the lawn. As soon as the pop-ups are changed out, I should be able to let the buffalo grass go unmowed.


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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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