Sounds like you are off to a great start....

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for you to get good germination going.

Thank

Better late than never with the follow-up.

This went pretty well. I kept it watered for 4 or 5 weeks and spent quite a bit of time pulling weeds, but it sprouted and filled in very nicely. Over the summer, I mowed it a few times as low as 3 inches.

I'm about to try this again, replacing my entire weed/St. Augustine front yard of about 1750 sq ft. this time. I'm hiring a landscaper to remove the existing grass and spread compost, but will do the seeding myself again.

Here's a current shot of the initial plot.

Buffalo has two challenges:

1. It cannot take competition from Bermuda, Zoysia, and Saint Augustine. That is assuming the conditions are right for them to grow.

2. It does not tolerate any shade.

So here is the problem if the other grasses like Bermuda gets what it needs to grow like water and sun shine, it will overtake Buffalo.

The fence, shrubs, and trees you have will be a problem if they cast any shade on the Buffalo.

This post was edited by texas-weed on Wed, Apr 3, 13 at 22:51

When did you plant it? I'm surprised there are any bare spots. These are all bunch grasses but tillering should spread them fairly well. Some buffs tiller much (MUCH) faster than others.

What was your watering regimen over the summer?

Texas-weed, having read about the shade intolerance, I was worried about the edges of this plot, but it seems to be doing great all around. This view is to the East, so the sun is usually on it by mid morning and into the late afternoon.

As the peach trees there and the oak behind and to the left of my camera continue to grow, I may have troubles, but so far so good. Without watering, the St Augustine in the yard confines itself to the area most shaded by the oak, so I'm content to let it and the buffalo negotiate their own border. I'm not shy about using Roundup on the Bermuda.

Dchall, after speaking with some of the Native American Seed people at the Wildflower Center last year, I think the bare spots are probably due to overwatering during sprouting, which was last April. Apparently the curly mesquite is particularly sensitive to too much water. The bare spots are most concentrated in the center of the circular plot where the impact sprinkler was, and it sputtered and leaked quite a bit, soaking that area.

I feel like I did water too much -- I was paranoid about them sprouting and kept it very wet for a whole month probably. I'll try to be more reserved this time.

And speaking of this time, I ended up balking at the landscaper's quote and rented a sod cutter on Friday and cut out the whole front yard myself. Having hacked the last plot out by hand, I can fully endorse the sod cutter as a miracle invention. Took about an hour to do the whole yard. I left the cut sod sitting while I was out of town and it's now pretty thin and dry. I'm planning to bag mow it this week, perhaps saving it to use as mulch for the seed.

The corner that was most Bermuda got 2 rounds of Roundup before cutting and I plan to put a perimeter bed in that area rather than grass. I'm going to bag up those cuttings and give them to the city.

Looks like we may get rain midweek -- I'm imagining seeing if I get some weed sprouts or Bermuda growth and spraying Roundup again before doing the soil prep and seeding over the weekend. Does that sound at all reasonable?

And just to clarify about the bare spots in the first plot, it is nowhere as bad as that picture seems to show. The bare spot at the bottom of the photo is actually the perimeter where the buffalo meets some centipede and some cool-weather grass that grows where traffic has gradually killed the St Augustine. I'm already seeing new sprouts in the bare spots and the buffalo runners are spreading well. It's also greened up and grown noticeably in the past week.

For the front yard project, I'm actually planning to do close to double the standard seeding rate to speed up coverage and hopefully cut down on weeding.

Update. Over the weekend, I did a little more cleanup and leveling with a rake, gave the Bermuda sprouts some more Roundup, then spread 8 pounds of seed over the ~1700 sq ft front lawn. I raked it lightly, went over it with a roller and got my sprinkler set up to go every 6 hours for 10 minutes.

I started to cover it all with a light layer of dead St Augustine, but ran out of daylight. And I've got a bag of alfalfa pellets I plan to spread, but am waiting for a friend to return my spreader.

Now I can just sit back and obsess over every sprout I see for the next 2 months.

Update. I've got a lot of grass growing. Lots of weeds too. I definitely rushed to seed and if I ever do this again, I'll spend at least 3 or 4 weeks sprouting weeds before I plant the grass.

I spent about 20 minutes pulling weeds tonight and will try to do the same a few times a week from here on out.

I'm not too worried, except for a couple of patches of Purslane that have formed a total carpet over about 30 or 40 square feet. I've hit bits of it with Roundup hoping to open up some spots for later grass sprouts or for the buffalo to spread into and get established.

I think I've probably been overwatering again. I was doing 10 minutes 4 times a day for the first 2 weeks. I did 20 twice a day for a week or so after that and I'm now doing 25 minutes every 3 days. Looks like we're getting to the heat now, with highs of 97 forecast for the next week. So I'll keep an eye on it for signs of stress, but I'm going to try to keep it as dry as possible to give it some advantage over the weeds.

I did end up mulching it a bit with dead grass and spread about 20 pounds of alfalfa before it sprouted.

More as this exciting story develops ...

Ps. The photo was taken at probably 6:30 PM -- most of the yard gets full sun for most of the day.

Just realized I hadn't posted photos previously. Here's a post-seeding and rolling shot.

And mulched.

And here's that purslane.

This is very interesting. I'm glad you are following up and posting pictures. Little is known about this grass mix outside of the universities. I've been told that blue grama will not survive much south of Austin, but I should have tried it anyway.

When that coily hose finally breaks, go to Sears and get a hose with a lifetime guarantee. I've replaced my hose from 1985 three times with no questions asked and no receipt needed (unlike guarantees with other hoses). I have about 8 Craftsman hoses now (two houses and one is an acre).

I know! That hose is about worthless. I've got it running to a sprayer there just for the purpose of watering the 100 square feet or so in the sprinkler-shadow of that tree. I'll definitely try Craftsman when I need a replacement.

I was just meaning to post some pics of my original plot, seeded April 11, 2012. I took some this morning after mowing for the first time this season.

It looks great. I'm really impressed with how thick it is. I've got a moderate crabgrass problem in one section, but you can't really tell by looking. And the buffalo is sending out runners pretty aggressively into the desodded area around it where I spread some additional seed the same time as I did the front yard.

Post-mow close up.

Pre-mow from earlier this week.

If you have buff escaping out of the circle, you might want to be sure it is seeded and watered to get the blue grama and curly mesquite to make it look right. Otherwise, that came in nice and dense. Good job.

Have you watered or fertilized?

Thanks!

I hadn't thought of that, but the area immediately around is seeded with Thunder Turf and sprouting pretty well. Further from the circle, it's not sprouting at all, probably because of inconsistent watering -- I didn't have a a timer on it like I did in the front yard. I also didn't spend as much time on prep back there and didn't mulch it.

The year-old section got watered through last July while establishing, then half of it has had a lot of water in the past month since I placed my impact sprinkler in the circle to best reach the new seeds. It also got alfalfa pellets a month ago, but I think that's all.

Buffalo grass is native to the great planes states. It is very drought resistant, but will not grow in the shade. I got acquainted with it while I was farming from 1987 to 2003. We had some growing in a gravel driveway where we drove the tractors, trucks and combine over it continually. The annual rainfall is 15 inches per year, but the buffalo grass would look dead during extreme dry times and then green up after a rain. It only received water when it rained. I was amazed and decided that's what I wanted for my lawn. I am having success plugging my yard with it, but gathering and planting the seeds does not work for me. Mowing it very short does not seem to hurt it. If left unmown, it grows to a maximum of 4 inches high. My goal is to have it over my entire 15 acres. It spreads with runners like Bermuda grass does and chokes everything else out. I read somewhere that the seed needs to be treated somehow to make it germinate when planted, but I have not checked that out. Hope this helps someone. I can post photos later, but you can Google "buffalo grass" and the click images for some good pix.

Here is a link that might be useful: Greeley,CO grasses

Buffalo grass is native to the great planes states. It is very drought resistant, but will not grow in the shade. I got acquainted with it while I was farming from 1987 to 2003. We had some growing in a gravel driveway where we drove the tractors, trucks and combine over it continually. The annual rainfall is 15 inches per year, but the buffalo grass would look dead during extreme dry times and then green up after a rain. It only received water when it rained. I was amazed and decided that's what I wanted for my lawn. I am having success plugging my yard with it, but gathering and planting the seeds does not work for me. Mowing it very short does not seem to hurt it. If left unmown, it grows to a maximum of 4 inches high. My goal is to have it over my entire 15 acres. It spreads with runners like Bermuda grass does and chokes everything else out. I read somewhere that the seed needs to be treated somehow to make it germinate when planted, but I have not checked that out. Hope this helps someone. I can post photos later, but you can Google "Buffalo grass" and then click "Images" for some good photos.

Here is a link that might be useful: Greeley,CO grasses

Would love an update. Thinking about this for my lawn. Starting in the back first.

Well, it's about to be 3rd summer for my front yard and the 4th for my backyard plot. I'll try to sum up my experience so far.

First though, I'll say I should probably report back in June to give a full opinion. We've had a lot of rain so far and I've got tons of winter grass and other early weeds in the yard right now and the turf is still dormant.

So at the moment, I'm not too happy with my choice, but as I recall from last year, once the grass gets going and everything dries out, it gets better.

Weeds are really my only complaint with my experience. I don't know if it would be any different with any other grass type, but it's been a constant fight. If I was starting again, I would wait much later to seed, and spend April watering and glyphosating the weeds multiple times.

All that said, I was really happy with how it thickened up and blocked the weeds last summer as compared to the previous year and I hope that trend will continue this year.

I'll just keep looking at those pictures I posted last year to keep my spirits up during the dormant spring phase.

And on another topic ... I did a bit of spot-spraying with glyphosate on some weeds a couple of weeks ago. I had visited with the Thunderturf people a couple of years ago at the Wildflower Center and they said it should be safe to spray while the turf was dormant.

I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I do have green turf growing within the brown sprayed weed patches. I don't think it's quite as green as the unsprayed areas though. I'll try to report on ongoing differences.

Also, I'm curious if anyone has knowledge or experience with Iron X. I wouldn't mind finding something that, even if not quite as effective as Roundup, I would be comfortable spraying on the whole lawn. Plus, there's that new glyphosate-causes-cancer study ...

Back to continue my personal lawn journal here ...

I don't think I'm going to use glyphosate on dormant grass again. I think it will probably recover, but I've got pretty persistent brown spots all over both lawns while the unsprayed sections are doing great. Unsprayed buffalo and blue grama are 3-4 inches tall and seeding in places. In the sprayed sections, the grass is greening up, but not really growing yet.

thanks for keeping this up. I just planted a tiny patch with buffalo and blue grama. Hope it works.

So, I'm in Irving actually, and I tilled, de-weeded, and put down some Thunder Turf bought from the Native American Seed Company. I'm hoping it does well. One question I had is this (I'm a new homeowner and never had a yard to play with as an adult): After you lay the seed down, how much making should you do? Basically, I did it very light, and you can still see most of the seed on the ground. Is that really bad? Is that going to keep it from sprouting? I had a bare spot that I put some Scott's bares pot builder, just basically threw it down, and it came up in a few weeks really nicely. Not really sure what's the best way to make sure I can lawn to grow. Any help is appreciated.

From my experience and reading, it seems like you need very little covering, so you should be fine. Both times I seeded, I spread a very-light covering of organic material on top to provide a bit of shade and something to retain more moisture. the first time I used the remains of a peat moss bail, the second, it was bits of thatch from the St Augustine lawn I had removed. i don't think it's strictly necessary, but you might consider it if you have something on hand.

Lawn started sprouting with all this wet weather we've had in the Dallas area. I'll post some of my pics and hopefully I can get some feedback.

As you can see, I've got a lot of weeds coming up. As far as I know, I think the thin green blades are the buffalo grass, right? Any suggestions on what I should do?

Michael, I'd be interested in knowing how your buffalo grass is doing. I'm in Dallas too, and had about an acre of buffalo grass seed hydromulched in August. It was not the ideal time to plant because the temps were over 100 every day of the month but it was the only time I could get it done. My issue is all of the preexisting weeds/grass that were apparently still alive under the bare dirt after the lot was graded. The buffalo grass seed germinated in many areas but the old weeds, bermuda and Johnson grass are overtaking the yard again.

That is exactly my problem too. Seems like buffalo can't compete. I'll post a pic of what I've got.