I haven't fertilized for a couple of years because I'm trying to favor the native grasses. When I fertilized, my lawn usually stayed green all winter.

When I look out on my lawn now, parts of it are still dormant, parts are green and parts are in the early stages of germination from the dormant seeding I did last November.

The parts that are still dormant fall into two categories. They're either the areas that are mostly KBG/TTTF or they're dominated by western wheatgrass or blue grama. The western wheatgrass will turn green in another week or so, but the grama won't wake up until mid May , probably.

Western wheatgrass can benefit from nitrogen applications more than other natives, but the main reason for differences in when the grasses turn green is that western wheatgrass likes warmer conditions (it's not a warm season grass, but it's slower to get going than other cool season grasses). The remaining KBG and fescue would have been green by now if I had fertilized in the fall.

My original motivation for going native was to save water, but I'm seeing other benefits as well. I haven't fertilized (not even UCG) for two years. And the native grasses grow more slowly, so I mow less than half as often as before (except when there are leaves on the lawn).

When it gets up and running can we get a pic?

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turf_toes wrote:Yeah. My only regret in reading your tales of native grasses is that you didn't round it up and start with those grasses from scratch.

It would be great to see THAT! But I guess that in time you'll get to the same destination. I really look forward to seeing photos!

I'm sure there are many folks who would be interested in doing what you're in the process of doing now.

I really wish I had started from scratch, also. My thinking when I started was that the replacement grasses would blend with the KBG/fescue fairly well since they have similar growing seasons. I was also a little concerned that the natives would suffer near the edges of my lawn since my neighbor overwaters so much that the KBG does just fine even though I shut off the sprinklers that water from the edge to about 15 feet in. Some of the native grasses would die if they had that much water.

I'll try to post some pictures before too long. Although it a sense it'll be disappointing. It just looks like a lawn (a good thing from my perspective, but it'll just be lawn pictures). It's not as dark green as KBG, fescue, etc, especially not like the elite cultivars, but it's green and it's almost unbelievable how little water it uses.

It's not really accurate for me to continue calling it a native grass lawn. I've got some crested wheatgrass in the mix and it's from Siberia (although it was bred for turf here in Utah). I've also got some strawberry clover (native to Eurasia). And sheep fescue is native to the area, but the cultivar that I'm using is descended from grass collected in Turkey.

After I mowed the lawn today, I was looking around and I think that the front lawn is now mostly low water turf alternatives. The center of the lawn is mostly streambank wheatgrass. There's a big section along the fence that I think is mostly either sheep fescue or crested wheatgrass (if if goes dormant when the temps hit 95, I'll know it's sheep fescue). I see western wheatgrass when I look for it, scattered throughout the yard. And the strawberry clover is mixed all through the lawn. I only planted blue grama in the hellstrip and only notice it when it's the only grass actively growing. There's still patches where the KBG/TTTF are dominant, but the other grasses are making inroads in those spots, so I think I'll just keep the watering to a minimum and let them take over.

The back yard is probably about 50-50. It gets more shade and more runoff when my neighbor overwaters, so the KBG and TTTF can do well even with my benign neglect (and the dog takes care of the nitrogen requirements). The water from my neighbors was a big part of why I didn't nuke the lawn. Many of the grasses I'm using will tolerate a lot of water for short periods but they'll die with the amount of water they'd get 6-10 feet in from the property line.

If I can find my digital camera, I'll post pictures tomorrow. Actually, I think my phone may have a better camera than my old digital camera, so maybe I need to RTFM and use that.

bpgreen,

found this page--
Click here for more information
picture of a house sitting on a wheatgrass yard. yep. it looks like grass from here.

Those are pretty good pictures. I tried taking a picture with my cell phone, but the pictures didn't look anything like my lawn. They were blurry and the color was nothing like my lawn's color. I have to figure out what I did with my camera--I found the case, but it's empty.

The link you posted has a couple of pictures. The lawn is probably a mix of different wheatgrasses and looks a lot like my lawn (except for the patches of clover in mine). The picture to the right of the lawn looks like streambank wheatgrass, the one below and to the left is probably western (kind of blue) and the one on the bottom right is crested wheatgrass that was allowed to go to seed.

I'm going to try to see if it will stay green with twice a month watering this year. Maybe I'll figure my cell phone camera out by July and take a picture when the lawn has been without water for a while.

bpgreen wrote:I'll try to post some pictures before too long. Although it a sense it'll be disappointing. It just looks like a lawn ...

bp, that is the point. You have a very unconventional mix of grasses...but it looks like a lawn!! You can tell us it looks like a lawn all you want, but we still envision a lawn full of weeds. Why? Because the grasses you are growing are considered to be weeds in any one of our lawns. We need more proof that your lawn looks like a lawn and it is not just you wearing your rose colored glasses. I have seen pix of your lawn and know it looks like a lawn, but everyone else wants to confirm that before they run to the nursery to buy a bag of weed seeds.

yeah, some of the "weed seeds" are kind of pricey--
Click here for more information
hehehehehehe.

I keep coming back to this topic over and over again waiting for a picture to show up and it never does. You're killing me!

I have quite an interest actually because I want to grow something along your lines in my parents back yard. We have a sulcata tortoise that eats about a dollar a day of extra food our vegetable gardens can't supply. I'd love to have a good mix for her to graze in the back yard

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Click here for more information
"Grasses should make up at least 75 percent of your sulcata tortoise's diet. You should try to supply as many different grasses as you can from the following list:

Buffalo Grass (Buchloe dactyloides)
Bermuda Grass (Cynodon Dactylon - actually originated in Africa!)
Orchardgrass (Dactylis glomerata)
Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii)
Little Bluestem (Andropogon scoparious)
Western wheatgrass (Agropyron smithii)
Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis)
Arizona Fescue (Festuca arizonica)
Lawn Fescue (Festuca arundinacea)----regular old K31
Sheep Fescue (Festuca ovina)
Creeping Red Fescue (Festuca rubra)

The best way to provide the grass-based diet that a sulcata requires is to have a large, safely-enclosed outdoor yard in which you can plant various types of grasses for your sulcata to graze on. "

well, ya learn something new everyday when you read BL. photo's on that site are fun.

clay&crabgrass wrote:yeah, some of the "weed seeds" are kind of pricey--
Click here for more information
hehehehehehe.

Those prices are pretty representative, but I got mine here last time. And the prices are a little misleading. The western and streambank wheatgrass run around $3-$5 a pound, but there are only 100k to 120k seeds per pound (the seeds really look like wheat).

I took pictures last weekend, but the color was very washed out and the focus was so bad it just looked like a green blur. I found my camera, but had to catch the shuttle to the airport before I had a chance to take pictures. I promise I'll post pictures this weekend.

This one is mostly native grass with some tall fescue in the lower right corner and some KBG in the upper left. There's a little strawberry clover showing in the upper right corner.


This is mostly native with some clover near the bottom and some KBG showing as it gets to the top.


As you can see, the KBG is a darker green, but I think the pictures exaggerate the color difference.

funny, you look up wheatgrass and etc. and if there's any pictures, it's pictures of out in the prairie somewhere.
your pictures look like a lawn. how many times do you mow in a season, how long is it when you mow? how would your lawn look if your transplanted it back to central Il.?

The reason you see it as a prairie grass is that it is a prairie grass. It's not very common as a lawn grass, although as water gets scarcer, more people are giving it a try.

I mow at the highest setting. In the spring, I have to mow once a week. Once the rain and snow stops, I mow once every two or three weeks. It just doesn't grow as fast when it doesn't have the water. It stays green, but slows down. I try to follow the 1/3 rule, but when I'm traveling and it's raining, it gets longer sometimes.

I think the sheep fescue and western wheatgrass would do okay in central Illinois, but the streambank wheatgrass and the crested wheatgrass would probably die because they can't handle the amount of water they'd get (and the fertile soil might be a problem, too). I'd substitute Dutch white clover for the strawberry clover since strawberry clover likes alkaline conditions.

I like it alot, BP!

I plan to post some pictures later this summer after I've watered at rates intended to keep the native grasses barely green. I'm aiming for 2x a month watering. It's looking like another unusually wet spring this year (we had two inches of rain last June and we've had a little rain already with some more in the forecast) so I may be able to delay watering until July again. I'm probably watering fewer times in a summer than most of my neighbors water in a week.

It hasn't rained since Jun 16 (0.12 inch then). I've been traveling and got home after dark, so I couldn't tell whether the grass needs water or not. But fireworks are legal here and my neighborhood has a lot of very religious folks, so odds are that the 4th of July will be celebrated on the 3rd (since the 4th is a Sunday). I didn't want to risk a lawn fire, so I set the sprinklers to run starting at 12:15 AM.

I may try to take some pictures tomorrow (well, later today).