What Type of Grass Gives You the Best Lawn
To understand how to maintain a beautiful lawn, it is important to know the grass type that is suitable for your climate and locale and their unique growing needs, maintenance needs, and resistance to tear and wear, pests, and diseases. This will help in knowing the methods of maintenance and treatment you ought to be using. For more assistance, https://www.schwartzlawncare.com/ has prepared this guide to help you distinguish between different types of popular grasses found across the U.S.
Know your grass growing region
Your location offers the first hint to your grass type. Just like landscape flowers and shrubs, lawn grasses have climate restrictions. For your grass to survive summers and winters in consecutive years, it must be suitable for your grass-growing region. In the northern half of the U.S., the most popular perennial lawn grasses grown there are cool-season grasses. They are called so because their peak growth occurs during the cool seasons of spring and fall. These ordinary lawn grasses flourish in cold northern climates and die out in tropical southern lawns. Popular lawn grasses in the southern half of the country are warm-season grasses, whose growth peak is during hot summer months. The cold temperatures in northern lawns make these grasses perish over winter. If your lawn grass pulls through every year, identification begins with a cool or warm season. In the evolution zone, the area where southern and northern grasses hit their limits, your lawn might have cool or warm-season grasses.
Identify common cool season lawn grasses: Kentucky bluegrass, ryegrass, tall and fine fescues
High humidity regions in the upper midwest, northeast, and Pacific Northwest generate primary conditions for winter-proof grasses like thick, light green to blue-green Kentucky bluegrass, glossy, finely textured dark green ryegrass, modestly thick, fair to dark green tall fescue, or the heavy green turf of fine fescue- owning the slimmest blades of all lawn grasses. Sowing a single cool-season grass is normally enough to sustain a green winter lawn, homeowners with elevated traffic lawns can opt to grow two or more cool-season grasses together to attain more wear-resistant turf. For example, fine fescue and ryegrass can grow in shade, while Kentucky bluegrass prefers full sun but if you sow these three species jointly on a region that receives a mix of shade and sun, the combination grass should do fine, irrespective of whether your lawn receives shade or sun intermittently. As a pest hardy and highly disease resistant grass, ryegrass can as well serve to strengthen the resistance of Kentucky bluegrass. Perennial or annual ryegrass can also be sowed over warm-season grasses. Applying this symbiotic approach, lawns can sustain a rich appearance in winter, because ryegrass remains green when warm-season grasses go passive. Later, when the warm-season grass becomes green again in spring, the ryegrass will varnish. Even when planted as one species, cool-season grasses need only moderate maintenance. Fine fescue may get by irrigation once a week, and can even survive without mowing for a more prairie-like, more natural appearance. However, Kentucky bluegrass requires weekly watering to irrigate its deep root system.
Identify common warm-season lawn grasses: St. Augustine, centipede, zoysia, Bahia, and bermudagrass
The blackish air, sandy soil, and high humidity of the Gulf state make it ideal rearing ground for St. Augustine, a rough, light to dark green textured grass, and Bahia, resembling a thick sod of narrowed, dark green blades. But Southern Californians can also succeed in growing Augustine grass. Along with Bahia, centipede which is a light green sliding grass is popularly grown in the southeast, where rainfall is plenty, while zoysia, which is an extremely drought-resistant grass with dense, soft, light to medium green blades is popularly grown in the South. Warm-season lawn grass species are valued for their ease of conservation, with requirements typically restricted to irrigation every three to seven days, daily mowing to variable heights, and fertilization on a biannual basis. Growing conditions can differ among warm-season species. For example, zoysia can grow in the partial shade while most varieties of St. Augustine and centipede grass require full sun exposure to flourish. Besides, each type of grass can withstand disease, wear, and insects to differing levels. Zoysia is one of the one of the fastest to repair itself, as well as resistant to weed infiltration. Centipede grass is rarely plagued by pests or disease but it is slow to mend after destruction thus making it less appropriate to high-traffic lawns. Bermudagrass is extremely tolerant of drought and heat, deep-rooted bermudagrass is one of the most popular warm-season lawn grasses. This average to fine-textured grass needs full, good drainage and direct sun. It’s pugnacious, spreading growth always leads to thatch build-up.
Observe lawn grass features
Once you are through with your search based on your growing area, look for differences and similarities between popular grasses to help to identify your grass type. Features like texture and color are easy to feel and see but other features need a closer look. Types of grass differ in the width of their blades and if tips of the blades are sharp-pointed, boat or round shaped. The positioning of grass leaves in new shoots known as vernation, maybe V-shaped and circular or folded and rolled. The growth habit of your grass also gives grass identification clues. Some types create clump-like bunches. Others grow above-ground stems called stolons, below-ground stems are called rhizomes, or both. Probing these features closely puts the groundwork for knowing the grass type of your lawn.
Once you have chosen the specific grass type your lawn has, you can maintain and manage both the health and appearance of your lawn, and also provide it with the maintenance and care it requires so that it becomes the lawn you have desired to own.
However, keeping a beautiful grass lawn isn’t always a simple task for homeowners who are not experienced.
