The Grass Is Greener!

Recent rains and cool weather means ideal conditions for cool season lawns greening up for the season. Cool season turf varieties for western Kansas include tall fescue and bluegrass.  Seed companies have blended the best varieties of each to give us a good mix for our area. K-State has done research all over the state to give us good counsel on the best “recipe” and it is blended and sold under the name Kansas Premium Fescue Blend in independent garden centers across the state.  Not only is variety blend important, but other factors can mean failure or success in seeding a new lawn.

All grass seed must be labeled with variety, amount of weed seeds included and “other crop” seeds.  It is this “other crop” stuff that makes the difference between clean seed and seed infested with stuff to trouble you in later years.  The “other crop” is plants that in other circumstances may be useful and desirable, but in fescue seed, a definite contaminate.  Orchard grass and rough bluegrass has its place in some situations but definitely not in turf seed.  Both are perennial grassy weeds that cannot be selectively controlled once they are in a lawn.

Buying guality seed starts with knowing what the label means.  The “percent other crop” is one of the most important designations on the label.  The grower does not have to list the particular species by name unless it is over 5%.

How much “other crop” is too much?  While that depends on what the “other crop” actually is, and your expectations for the lawn you are seeding, tolerance for “other crop” is very low.  If it is something undesirable, less than ½ of 1 % can ruin a bag of seed.  For example, if a bag of tall fescue seed contained 5% orchardgrass, the buyer would end up planting 12 to 16 orchardgrass seeds per square foot.  Grass seed sold by the pound at independent garden centers is usually a purer seed than those packaged and sold in big box stores or mass merchandisers and it is also more expensive.  Seeding a lawn is a big job, begin with the best seed available.

I am often asked “What is the best shade grass for Kansas?”. Not a hard question to answer but there are some areas of discussion.  Tall fescue is the best shade grass adapted to Kansas conditions.  However, some conditions are just too shady to sustain a lawn over the long term.  What can you do?  You can prune the lower branches of trees so more early and late sun reaches the turf.  Many times this is not practical because it destroys the shape of the tree.  A second option is to plant ground cover that is well adapted to the particular shady site you are dealing with.  Another solution is to give up planting anything and just use mulch under the tree.

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