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.

Sounds like you think the experiment failed. Did you plant a seeded variety of buffalo or sod? I don't think that was thatch. I think that was buffalo grass plants. Thatch is a dense mat of plant material just above the soil. It ranges from roots to stolons to grass plants. Yours didn't look like a dense mat of anything. It looked like grass in a dormant stage. In the wild, buffalo grass would NOT be closely grazed by bison or cows. If it was grazed at all it would be grazed once in the spring and the bison would move on looking for tender new grass. They would have kept on moving until they reached central Canada and then they would have returned feeding on other grasses. By the time they returned to your buffalo grass patch, it would be 18 inches tall. The only time forage is closely grazed over long periods is after fences are installed to keep the livestock from leaving to look for fresh forage. Fencing animals in is not natural or "in the wild." What is your watering schedule? How long and how often? Is the blue grama an experiment or do you have reason to believe it is the solution to a problem?

You should see my old yard! :) I just get tired of hot weather in the summer and want shade instead. Lol. I checked out your blog and it says you water buffalo grass every 10 days? That's what I do with my st augustine grass too (in Midlothian, Texas located south of Dallas). Just moved to the hill country west of Austin, Texas. With frequent water restriction, my old habit of watering lawn very infrequently will come handy but it depends on the rules, I suppose. I've seen crazy rules where you can only water from midnight to 5am! Thank goodness, my new house comes with sprinkler system but I still hate it because they get in the way of landscaping for sure. Keep it in mind, it seems that ALL grass need deep watering infrequently to look decent/good which also to benefit trees what was my main focus but it turns out it works pretty good for grass too. 'Floratam' St Aug is the most drought hardy but not so strong cold hardy. When it comes to absolutely doing nothing, that's another story! When it comes to doing almost nothing in Houston, zoysia grass seem to do be best overall (some trees around). Not sure about Midlothian area. Bermuda is the king for sunny area but no idea for zoysia in more shady area. I need to get some buffalo plugs for my parents in law. They NEVER water lawn. Just trees if they even remember to do it. Blue Gramma too. I want to see how they do it. I SHOULD have dug up this unusual grass that NOBODY seemed to know what exactly it is. I posted a thread about it earlier. I love this grass. I can't believe I moved away without digging up a piece from the park where it was. :( Bermuda grass could not invade it. That was what caught my attention. It just slowly expanded out over the past few years.

I am not in an area where buffalo grass would be happy, so my experience is with basic rural weedy lawns, but I imagine that buffalo grass's need for less water and less mowing will make most bulbs happy. Scilla has seeded itself into my lawn, so I would imagine it will do fine in yours. Iris reticulata has short flowers, but they are followed by tall foliage, ~15", so I don't think it would do well in a lawn. I am guessing T. tarda will be fine, since it has relatively short, flat rosettes of foliage that die back sooner than most of my other tulips. Various types of Crocus are grown in lawns around here, so I imagine C. ancyrensis will be OK, though I am not familiar with that particular variety. I don't think I've ever grown Chionodoxa, and I don't have an issue with squirrels, so I can't help with either one of those. I know squirrels will often eat tulips and like to dig where something else has dug, so planting in the lawn may help discourage the squirrels from digging up your bulbs as opposed to soft garden soil.