Thanks for sharing this BP. I have been looking into a way to replace my tired, worn out, and crappy looking KBG with something much more suited to our climate.

It seems work surrounding the native grass lawns focuses on buffalo and blue grama. Fine grasses (I use a lot of blue grama in my landscaping) but I have always thought that there had to be others. This whole area, as you said, was prairie with a seemingly endless array of choices.

The first one the came to mind was western wheat, which grows extensively across the Front Range. The reason it came to mind is because it is a sod forming grass. But it's also very tall and coarse, regular mowing may help make it more "flat," but I have trouble imagining walking across a lawn of western wheat barefoot.

Recently we seeded a lot of Canada rye at work, so I started looking into that, too. It's a bunchgrass though, and I'm unsure if consistent mowing forces tillering like it does with blue grama. It's also extremely tall and coarse.

The absentee neighbor's lawn has been taken over by smooth brome. It looks gorgeous right now, but when it gets cut, its very "stemmy" rather than leafy. I am also not a huge fan of the fact smooth brome has overtaken most of what's left of the native xeric tallgrass prairie that we have here, forcing out the community of big and little bluestem, switch and Indian grass and turning it into a monoculture.

USDA calls Indian grass a "rhizomatus bunchgrass" so mowing might encourage tillering with that. but once again, my main concern is the coarseness and that cutting taller grasses will lead to "stemminess", although, if done regularly, it might not. It's also warm-season however.

Another thing is that some grasses don't respond as well to cutting as others. For example, not that it would otherwise make a good turfgrass, but you could not repeatedly mow down little bluestem through the growing season without killing it.

I will be looking into the fesuces that you mentioned, they sound promising. Do you know how all these stand up to traffic?

The only fescues I've dealt with are K31 and sheep fescue. K31 is tough, but not a good choice for a lawn.

I planted the sheep fescue long after traffic was a consideration, so I can't help with that.

What I've been suggesting for the last few years is to use the cabin mix I linked above, If you want, you can add DWC or strawberry clover, or you can use it as is.

If you are still interested, have you looked into Arkansas Valley Seed (www.avseeds.com). They are located here in Denver and we use them pretty regularly at work (just picked up two pallets of sorghum from them yesterday in fact). I'm not sure if they distribute out to Utah or not, but might be worth looking into.

Anything has got to be an improvement over what I've got going on now, and each year it only get's worse, despite my best efforts. Showcase isn't what I'm after, I would settle for "alive." It's gotten so bad recently that dock, mullein and Canada thistles have started to show up. Great, now I not only have a dreadful lawn, but I'm harboring noxious weeds.

Part of the problem I know is the watering, my irrigation system sucks. Sprinkler heads that either don't work properly, and don't hit areas evenly. I'm tired of replacing the heads, and I don't have the desire to revamp the poorly designed layout. In any case, after too many years of this, the KBG (which is well over 30 years old and never had much attention paid to it to begin with) is just completely worn out. KBG is piss-poor choice for the Front Range anyways, FAAAAR too much effort to keep looking decent than it's worth. So, I am looking for alternatives that, while they may not be the most beautiful, will actually survive without constant pampering.

Hey there!

How are the lawns doing?

RMG has a question about Streambank Wheatgrass. Think that there could be some updates? I'm sure that they would be appreciated.

Steve

I'm not sure of the exact varieties, but we opted for a rye/tall fescue blend when we added our lawn. It gets watered once per week, or less if we get rain. I don't notice it greening up later than our neighbors' lawns, which are all Kentucky Blue. We also don't do any fertilizing, other than leaving the cut grass in place to add nutrients back into the soil. We have never aerated or added chemicals of any sort to our lawn, and I have to say, it looks healthier than the KB lawns that seem to require all kinds of maintenance. The only maintenance our lawn needs is weekly mowing during the summer (less than weekly in the fall and spring when it grows more slowly), and hand weeding to keep the bind weed, dandelions, and other weeds at bay.

In our boulevard area (between the sidewalk and street), we planted Buffalo grass from seed. It took some water to get it established (about 10 years ago), but filled in nicely within a couple of years. In the spring when it's still dormant, species tulips and few mats of phlox give it some color, and in the summer flax, poppy mallow, and California poppies give it a meadow look. We thatch it once a year in the spring but it doesn't need mowing. If we had to do it over again, I probably would have used Buffalo grass for the whole backyard lawn, which is in full sun. The only place it doesn't work well is in the shade. I'm also not sure how it would hold up to dogs and heavy foot traffic, but it can handle medium amounts of traffic just fine.