Growing gorgeous grass

Growing a mixture of varieties is the key to having a green lawn all year.

Early this spring, Denny, a friend of mine, wanted me to help him keep his lawn looking beautiful all year long. The operative phrase is "all year long." He said he seeded his lawn early last fall with a turf-type tall fescue and fertilized it with a new lawn starter. A month later he fertilized with a high-nitrogen lawn food, and finally in November he applied a winterizer. By late fall his lawn looked absolutely gorgeous.

This spring Denny applied to his lawn a crabgrass preventer along with a high-nitrogen fertilizer. His lawn looked great until our weather turned hot and humid. He then began to notice brown spots in his lawn. These brown spots, caused by a fungus commonly known as brown patch, have continued to increase in size as the weather continues to be hot and muggy.

Denny knew that brown patch was going to be a problem because he had fought it over the last few years. With that in mind, he began applying fungicides every three weeks starting in May. Unfortunately the fungicide is not completely eliminating the problem. So now his lawn looks like a green carpet with myriads of large brown freckles all over it.

Unfortunately, my friend's story is echoed by those of other lawn owners in the region. They, along with Denny, seeded in the fall, got a nice-looking lawn, and then watched it go downhill in early summer due to brown patch.

Is there a solution to my friend's problem? I think there is a solution if we return to an old tried and true turfgrass management tenet: "Grow a mixture of grasses in your lawn." In grass mixtures the disadvantages of one grass are masked or eliminated by the advantages of the other grasses in the mixture. For the area, I think a mixture of improved turf-type tall fescue in combination with an improved bluegrass would work well.

The advantages of turf-tall fescues are their deep roots that help them withstand our typical summer droughts. Bluegrasses, on the other hand, have shallow root systems and require lots of irrigation during summer months in order to keep them green and growing.

Fescue grows in clumps and does not form a sod. In order to get a good stand of grass in a lawn, you have to seed at high rates, up to 400 pounds to the acre.

Since fescues grow in clumps, erosion often occurs between clumps on sloped lawns. On the other hand, since bluegrass produces a sod, once established on a slope, it reduces soil erosion.

Because fescue grows in clumps and does not spread out very well, damaged areas are slow to fill in. Because bluegrasses produce stolons, damaged areas are filled in quickly, usually within one growing season if moisture and nutritional levels are adequate.

Turf-type tall fescues are susceptible to brown patch as my friend has found out. On the other hand, bluegrasses generally do not suffer from brown patch infections. Conversely, bluegrasses are susceptible to leaf spot and pythium disease while fescues are not.

As you can see the advantages of bluegrass outweigh or mask the disadvantages of fescue and vice versa. So, which specific varieties do you chose for the mixture in your lawn? Among the fescues, try using Jaguar, Falcon, or Adventure. Then mix bluegrasses such as Baron, Glade, or Midnight, with your fescues. I think that you will find you can have a lawn that will be gorgeous all year long, as well as requiring fewer applications of pesticides to keep it that way.

Send your gardening and landscape questions to Paul Schnare at P.O. Box 699; Cape Girardeau, Mo. 63702-0699 or by e-mail to news@semissourian.com.