Turfgrass
The Perfect Lawn
Turf has become one of the most important elements in many american landscapes. Sometimes grass is the only landscaping around a house.
Incredible amounts of time and money are spent each year on caring for turf grass. It is spent applying fertilizers, pesticides, all sorts of power lawn care equipment, and inordinate gallons of water. All is spent in a desire to achieve the perfect lawn.
Considering the Perfect Lawn
It is nice to have green grass. It looks attractive and makes an area pleasant to see and be in when surounded with nice green grassy areas. Interestingly, the concept of what a perfect lawn looks like has changed over the last 50 or less years. As the middle class has increased in wealth and more people spend leisure hours at the golf course, at one time the domain of doctors and lawyers, more people believe that the highly and artificially maintained golf course is the standard to be held to. There was a time when ordinary folks laughed at the foolishness of the wealthy for dumping huge amounts of fertilizers to make the grass green and chemical poisons to kill all the weeds, bugs and diseases that might infest the grass. Or that they wasted water on the grass.
Today, the neighbors will look down their noses if they notice pretty golden dandelions or white heads of clover flowers in your yard. Some people believe they are failures in caring for their yards if a single brown spot appears in the middle of summer. It matters not that the temperature is over 100 degrees F. and you have bluegrass, a cool season grass.
There was a time when clover seed was sold next to the grass seed. Some grass seed mixtures even included a certain percentage of clover as part of a desirable lawn. Blasphomy now, to want clover in the grass, but clover adds nitrogen naturally to the soil. Nitrogen is the ingredient of fertilizers that grass needs most to make it green. Everyone knew that bluegrass goes dormant for a while in the summer when it gets hot. Insect and disease problems were virtually unheard of. There were some weeds in the grass, but unless it was a thistle, most people did not worry a lot about them. There were some weed killers, but if a people were really worried, they usually dug them out.
Choose the Best Turf Cultivars for the Site
Every site is a bit different, even in different parts of the same yard. Under the trees and on the North-east side of a building there can be very dense shade, while other areas get no sun at all. Bluegrass, the most common turf grass grows quite well in the sun, but poorly or not at all in the shade. Ceeping red fescue will survive better in the shade. It is best to choose a mixture of species so they can fight it out and the strongest plants for the site make it, rather than all the same species and same cultivar. Read the packages for information on sun or shad mixes.
The amount of traffic, meaning walking on it, that an area gets will also determine what type of grass to choose. Blue grass tolerates some walking on it, but before long there will be dead areas if the same place is always the path. If you have dogs and kids who play soccer in the back yard, then one of the tall fescues is a better choice than blue grass because it tolerates much more traffic.
The amount of water a site will get makes a difference. Most grasses will survive the entire summer with no water, but the sociatal norms are now such that we prrefer the grass does not look like it has died. Bluegrass goes dormant easily when there is limited water. Tall fescue will go dormant during the worst heat of the summer, and needs much less water to stay green than bluegrass. these are both called cool seson grasses because they do best in the cooler and moister seasons of spring and fall. A warm season grass that has been used for some time is zoisia grass. It is a vigorous, thick grass that stayse green all summer. Its drawbacks are that it grows really well in summer and will spread into everything and as soon as the weather goes below freezing, it turns goldne-brown and stays that way all winter. A turf species that need much less water than zoisia, is a native Nebraskan and only grows a few inches tall, so needs less mowing, though will look a little rough and shaggy bby the end of the season. It also spreads vigorously like zosia during the warm seasons and is brown after the first hard frost.
- Fertilizers
- Pestcides
- Water
Turf on a Diet
Nancy's Blasphemy
Too much time, money and mental anguish is spent on turf. It really isn't worth all the fuss.
People have been growing turf for quite a long time. It is only somewhat recently that so many people have been brainwashed into thinking that they have to have perfectly green, totally mono-culture grass, 12 months a year, even during the hot summer when cool season grasses naturally go dormant.
When the high amounts of fertilizers and water and pesticides are put on the turf it is actually weaker than turf that is not "pampered" quite so much.
Less Water and Fertilizer
People seem to think the grass must be kept green all summer even when the the temperature is 90 to 110 F. Most people in Nebraska have bluegrass or fescue, which are cool season plants and only actively growing in spring and fall. During the winter, grass may stay green if the temperatures dont drop too low and there is a good snow cover.
If grass is subjected to the freezing, drying winds of an open winter it generally turns brown and noone thinks anything about it. During summer cool season grasses are supposed to be dormant. This is what they do when humans are not around. The grass escentially takes a nap during the heat of the year, waking up in the fall and growing again.
When we water it several times a week and give plenty of fertilizations to help it grow more all summer we are making the turf weak.
- It has to grow during periods of the year when it is not naturally adapted to grow.
- Watering it so the root zone never dries out causes plants to have short roots because the roots never have to grow any deeper to get moisture.
- Growing during a period of the year when it should be resting make it suseptible to a number of fungus diseases.
- Fertilizing to force the grass to grow lushly green all summer is an invitation to diseases and insects to take advantage of the situation.
Turf as a Design Element
An attractive lawn is beautiful when set against the lines of a well designed landscape. The bedlines of the landscaping causing the turf to become negativve space elements with the beds as positive space.
Turf lawns as well as other ground covers make a nice contrast of negative space against beds of flowers and shrubbery, when speaking of design elements.
