I don't know about sod, but the High Country Gardening catalog from Santa Fe, NM, has buffalo grass plugs. Plant them on either 8 inch centers or 12 inch centers (8 inch centers fill in faster), water the first year to establish, and you have it.

Here's the link, scroll down to find the buffalo grass.

Catherine

Here is a link that might be useful: Buffalo Grass and other native grasses

We have Legacy BG available in Salt Lake and it's about 3 times the price of KBG. You better find a local source because it need to get laid pronto. Even then, it'll brown out for about 3 weeks.

You need to be very diligent in watering it until it gets established, especially is you use plugs. You'll also have to hand weed during the growing season but you can use chemicals while it's dormant. It won't green up as fast as KBG so your HOA might think you've got dead grass until June.

An alternative you might want to consider would be cool season native grasses.

I've been overseeding with Western wheatgrass and Streambank wheatgrass with the intention of replacing my KBG/Fescue lawn with cool season natives. I just started last year, so I can't give a complete report, but so far, it looks like the western wheatgrass is a little harder to get started but looks closer to KBG. The streambank wheatgrass is a paler green, but in some spots where it is mixed with KBG, I'm hard pressed to find the streambank wheatgrass.

These grasses may use even less water than buffalo grass, and they have a longer green season than buffalo grass in our area.

See now I live in colorado, and Buffalo grass grows in our lawn all the time, and the city I live in calls it a weed. We got ticketed for it last year because it was all over our lawn. I hate colorado sometimes. How can we have a green lawn with drought and water control. Illegal rain barrels! JEZZZZ!

Wow clpcode4 5 that stinks. What city is that with the inflated ego of all nice green lawns? They should subsidize BG. Like to know so that I will never move there. Did you ever consider running for election?

Hi, just wanted to weigh in - Green Valley Turf Farms on south Santa Fe drive in Denver has Legacy Buffalo sod. You might want to check them out.
As a side note, I'm a xeriscape devotee (tore up all front lawn and xeriscaped and only have a "pond" of turf in the back) and I considered Buffalo but since my lawn is VERY high traffic I went with Graff's Turf Farms' Reveille sod - it's a low-water bluegrass and is amazing. We did good soil prep and by the end of summer I was only watering once a week (occasionally twice when we had those stretches in the 90s). The roots are a foot deep and it's gorgeous.

I am acquiring a new home w/ covenants that requires that at least 50% of the "yard" be grass - it doesn't specify KBG so I am going w/ BG & foregoing the $5K sprinkler system associated w/ KBG. Any ideas where I can get BG sod in CO? Thanks in advance, billgr

Gawd. My complaint about Colo is the prevalence of covenants. You may want to examine the wording and ensure that brown grass for 7 months is OK with the rules.

The natives like crested wheatgrass likely won't work here, as the intent likely is for 'well-manicured'. I second the general shout-out Reveille or some of the other "low-water" turfs out there, but these won't work if you don't install an irrigation system.

As we don't know where you live, we can't give you specific advice for suppliers, but I'd call one of these and ask them, shouldn't take long...

Dan

"The natives like crested wheatgrass likely won't work here, as the intent likely is for 'well-manicured'."

Crested wheatgrass isn't a native. It's an import from Siberia. But crested wheatgrass and native wheatgrasses can be used for well manicured lawns. Crested wheatgrass is a bit too yellow for my tastes, but the streambank and western wheatgrass blend in well with the rest of the lawn. I'm hoping that they'll soon take over the lawn as I cut way back on watering.

That's what I get for commenting in a hurry, bp.

Nonetheless, my comment was directed at the fact that many of these grasses cannot tolerate the close mowing of typical turf; some municipalities down here get complaints from the citizens about the tall grass height in the public areas - I'm thinking specifically of Commerce City and their attempts to put in drought-tolerant grasses...

Dan

Whether it's KBG or natives, I don't mow short. I mow at about 3.5 inches except when I'm getting ready to overseed and then I mow as low as I can. The wheatgrasses all survived the scalping last fall, but I do think they're "happier" when mowed above 3 inches.

I don't think it's the variety of grass that makes it too tall. In fact, streambank wheatgrass grows much more slowly than KBG does, so you can let it go for a pretty long time without worrying about it getting too tall. I haven't had enough of the western wheatgrass take off to know how fast it grows, but I think somebody else who posts here has both and has said that it grows slowly, also.

Green Valley Turf Company in Colorao has Legacy a patented buffalo grass which is all female. Legacy doesn't produce the little male tips (awns) that some people want to mow off. It sounds as though if you plant the Legacy sod, which you can buy in June when it is growing strongly, that you'll have a grass that grows to five inches and you'll have no need to mow much. It does brown out for three weeks and you need to water it well during those three weeks after planting the sod, but later on, you have a no care lawn which might need only a watering once a month, and a mowing once a month. I love the stuff and it's
great for Colorado.

I like buffalo grass too, but it does green up very late in the spring, which depending on your HOA may or may not pass muster. The first spring after we planted ours I was sure it had all died over the winter until the nice folks around here reassured me that it would turn green eventually (and it did).

There is a law in Colorado that bypasses any HOA "rule" that they need to allow for other grass varieties, as well as xeriscaping.