Grass - for mowin', not smokin'

I can’t have an “official” lawn because the well at my house is so limited. I just mow the “meadows” till they are brown and less than four-inches tall as if that’ll do anything to stop a forest fire—NOT.

Anyway, I watch with envy as some neighbors with good-producing wells go about planting and watering their lawns. Still it’s water that was meant to trickle through crooks and crannies of the deep underground as it meanders ever so slowly, at my house, to the ocean.

Conserving water should be everyone’s approach to a garden as water is more like a finite resource these days.

There is one fascinating plant to consider as a lawn substitute in dry areas— Buffalo grass (Buchloe dactyloides). This grass naturally grows where the yearly rainfall is 17 inches or less.

A bit of background information:
The man responsible for the amazing “etching” of a Buffalo grass’ root system is John Weaver, a Professor of Plant Ecology at the University of Nebraska for 47 years. Weaver literally went into the trenches to excavate the root zones of plants. Working and recording as carefully as the most compulsive and attentive archeologist uncovering a buried civilization, he spent countless hours following and mapping roots and the patterns they made beneath his feet.

The illustration (From Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive, published by me.) was done in west-central Kansas and shows Buffalo grass roots in proportion to their foliage. It must be the extensive depth of the roots that allows buffalo grass to withstand long periods of drought, although 70% of the root mass is in the first six inches of the soil. The plant can be kept mowed to 5-6 inches for a continuous cover. While not as sturdy to foot wear-and-tear as our more common lawn grasses, it does fit the visual desire of a mown meadow. As with many turf grasses, irrigation in the top six inches is ideal for good-looking growth.

To maintain a green turf, Buffalo grass needs only .3 inches of water per week compared to .5 for Bermuda grass, .8 for tall fescue, 1.2 for Kentucky bluegrass and 1.5 for perennial ryegrass. Another way to look at it is that Buffalo grass can last 21-45 days without irrigation, compared with St. Augustine grass, which can need watering every five days.

This native grass has been “domesticated” as a substitute for lawns in dry areas or any place a gardener wants to conserve water. Buffalo grass is well suited to the transition zones of the country, where it’s often too hot for cool-season grasses such as Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass and tall fescue and too cold for warm-season species like St. Augustine, Bermuda and zoysia. Use one of the more recent selections that are available, and check with your local Cooperative Extension as to its appropriateness for your area. Some examples are: 'Legacy®' and 'Prestige™.

Let me know if you’ve tried this grass and what the results were.

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.

Visit my web site to learn about my gardening books.

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Lavenders - Prune with care-free abandon

Well, not with a weed-whacker or inattentive eyes. But with educated eyes and some trusty clippers.

Most people prune their lavenders wrong. They often cut the flower stem back to where the foliage begins. This works for awhile. However, I found out in the distant past that I ended up with a leggier plant that flopped open from the weight of the blossoms, as is the case with the Spanish lavender (Lavandula stoechas var. 'Otto Quast'). For other lavender species and cultivars, they just had shorter lives as they became more gangly. Eventually I learned that this sub-shrub needs “severe” pruning. NOT back to so-called “dead wood” as nothing will sprout where there are no leaves.

Yesterday I pruned a large Spanish lavender plant. (The “English” varieties are budding, but not yet blooming.) The photograph of my 15-year-old Spanish lavender shows how dramatically I prune. I prune back to where there is only one- to two-inches of foliage. In the photograph, it shows that I cut the flower stems and the foliage by eight or more inches. I filled a 15-gallon container with the clippings of a single five-foot-wide plant. This more radical pruning keeps the plant more compact and less likely to flop open. And such care means a long, healthy life for each lavender.

Try this style of intensive pruning – but not with totally-free abandonment.

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.

Visit my web site to learn about my gardening books.

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Dripping My Way Through the Forest

For anyone interested in water, a rain-gauge is not only an essential tool and toy, but a great topic for cocktail party chit-chat. Did you know, for example, that one can actually overlook 30 to 60 inches of "rain"?

I live on a high ridge dividing a hotter, dryer inland plain from the more temperate, wetter Pacific Ocean climate some five miles to the west. The non-drought average rainfall on top of my cloud-scraping ridge is about 60 inches per year.

Shortly after moving here, I noticed that a foggy summer evening produced the sound of steady rain beneath the tallest trees—even though a meadow 20 feet away remained bone-dry. I soon learned that in my Mediterranean coastal zone, summer "rain," consisting of droplets of condensed fog, is a frequent occurrence

In this climate, with its summer fogs and winter rains, moist air condenses on the leaves of plants and forms droplets like the hot-weather "sweat" on a bottle of cold soda. The collective needles of the Douglas fir trees near my house offer an immense surface area for this condensation.

I set up a rain-gauge beneath the tallest (125 -foot) Douglas fir tree, and over six years I've discovered that this single tree gathers one or more inches of "rain" each summer night during heavy fogs, and half-again to twice the year-round "rain" of the adjacent open meadow. The month of August usually produces six inches of summer fog drip, or an amazing 163,000 gallons per acre of tree foliage!

To utilize nature's original "drip irrigation" and take direct advantage of this free rain, I plant beneath the dripline of the Douglas firs near my patio The difficulty is finding plants that are somewhat drought-tolerant, shade-loving and deer-resistant. So far my list includes most of the varieties of Daphne (Daphne spp.); wild ginger (Asarum caudatum); native Western ferns; foxgloves (Digitalis spp.); huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum); Forget-me-nots (Myosotis scorpioides); salal from Northern CA, OR and WA (Gaultheria shallon); the native thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus); Euryops pectinatus (gets leggy, must have late evening light); and various ornamental grasses. Soon to be infiltrated by Rhododendrons spp., Azaleas spp., and bear berries (Mahonia spp.)

Please post a comment - I want to know what you think.

Visit my web site to learn about my gardening books.

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert