Determining Your Grass Type
Determining your existing grass type can be challenging, especially for beginners or those living in transition zones where both warm-season and cool-season grasses may coexist in different parts of the yard. To establish a successful lawn, it's crucial to consider the species best suited to the environmental conditions, intended use, and maintenance level of the specific location.
Grasses, like humans, tolerate various conditions and resist stresses differently. For example, in the Northeast, blends of Kentucky Bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, and tall or fine fescues (such as creeping red, Chewings, and hard fescues) are commonly used for lawns and athletic fields due to their high cold tolerance. Conversely, creeping bentgrass is often used on high-maintenance playing fields, like golf course putting greens.
Here are a few tips to help you in the grass identification process:
Know your climate zone: Determine your climate zone using the map above. Grasses are categorized into cool-season and warm-season types based on their preferred climates.
Examine Different Grasses: Pluck various grass blades from your yard and examine these characteristics:
Shape: Is the blade fine (thin), coarse (wider/thicker), or broad (very wide)?
Texture: Is the blade soft and smooth, dense, delicate, coarse and stiff, or rough and wiry?
Color: Is the blade bright green, light green, light to medium green, deep green to blue-green, or dark green?
Examine Growth Patterns: While I'll cover grass anatomy in detail later, beginners should know that grasses like fescues grow upright in clumps via tillers, whereas others like Bermuda spread via stolons and rhizomes.
Monitor Seasonal Activity: Note when your grass is most active. Cool-season grasses peak during fall and spring, while warm-season grasses thrive in summer.
Utilize Resources: Use tools like Google photo search for identification. Join beginner lawn care Facebook groups for advice (be prepared for jerks but don’t be afraid). Contact your local county extension office for assistance; they can help with identification of grass and weeds and may offer soil testing services at reasonable fees.
Next, I'll provide an easy-to-digest overview of common grass types used in lawns. If you're in a cool-season region, you can skip sections on warm-season grasses and vice versa. However, understanding both types can be beneficial.
Cool-season grasses:
1) Kentucky Bluegrass
Texture: Fine to medium texture.
Color: Dark green/blue color.
Propagation (how it spreads): Rhizomes (underground stems) and tillers (shoots that grow from the base of a grass plant).
Tolerance: Very high for cold and wear, moderate for heat and drought. Goes semi-dormant in periods of hot/dry conditions, but recovers quickly in cool temperates/moisture levels.
Maintenance Level: Moderate to high.
Growth environment: Well drained, sunny areas.
When to Plant: Fall, spring.
Fertilizer needs: Requires a higher amount of Nitrogen than other cool season lawns.
Uses: Anywhere a dense turf is desired- Lawns, parks, athletic fields, golf courses (fairways).
Downsides: Produces thatch. Susceptible to diseases such as leaf spot, dollar spot, stripe smut, necrotic ring spots, summer patch. Poor shade tolerance in the Northeast.
Other characteristics: Commonly used for sod given its rhizomes. When mowed higher (2 1/2 to 3 inches) it can hinder weed growth.
2) Perennial Ryegrass
Texture: Fine to medium texture, shiny.
Color: Deep green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Seed.
Tolerance: Heat and wear tolerant.
Maintenance Level: Low to moderate.
Growth environment: Does best on well drained soils.
When to Plant: Fall, spring; fall when it is being used to winter overseed warm-season grass.
Fertilizer needs: Needs 2-4 lbs. nitrogen per 1,000 sq. ft. with limited thatch accumulation.
Uses: High traffic areas- lawns, athletic/playing fields, overseeding warm-season grasses to generate color during the winter.
Downsides: Doesn’t withstand shade and drought well. Susceptible to ice cover injury and diseases such as brown patch, pythium blight, dollar spot, red thread, and rust.
Other characteristics: Good complement to Kentucky Bluegrass or fine fescues. It germinates rapidly and establishes quickly, making it good for overseeding. It can compete with other grasses so it can be used alone or in a combination mix where it might make up 10-20% of total seed.
3) Tall Fescues
Texture: Fine texture.
Color: Dark green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Tillers. Some varieties have short rhizomes.
Tolerance: Heat, moderate shade (more than Kentucky Bluegrass/Perennial Ryegrass but less than fine fescues), and drought tolerant.
Maintenance Level: Low.
Growth environment: Performs best in well drained soil in sunny areas.
When to Plant: Fall, spring.
Fertilizer needs: Requires 2.5-3 lbs. of nitrogen per 1000 sq. ft per growing season. Limited thatch.
Uses: Lawns, playgrounds, athletic fields, slopes/embankments, pastures/grazing fields.
Downsides: Slow to establish. Highly susceptible to brown patch, red thread, and pythium blight diseases.
Other characteristics: Can be clumpy in its appearance and doesn’t always mix well with other grasses.
4) Fine Fescues (creeping red, chewings, hard)
Texture: Fine, soft texture.
Color: Medium to dark green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Varies.
Tolerance: Very tolerant of low pH, drought, shade. Doesn’t do well in hot, humid conditions.
Maintenance Level: Low to moderate.
Growth environment: Work well in many environments but tolerate shade better than many other turfgrasses.
When to Plant: Fall, spring; fall when it is being used to winter overseed warm-season grass.
Fertilizer needs: 1-2 lbs. of nitrogen per 1,000 sq. ft. per growing season. Generally minimal thatch production.
Uses: Lower traffic areas- lawns and parks.
Downsides: Susceptible to leaf spot, red thread, and dollar spot diseases. Chewing fescue is aggressive and can overtake other grasses, doesn’t stand up well to heavy traffic, and can be slow to recover from damage. Red fescue do not tolerate wet soils or clay and is less heat tolerant than other fescues and does not stand up well to wear.
Other characteristics: Commonly used in mixes with other cool-season grasses.
Warm-season grasses:
1) Bermuda
Texture: Coarse.
Color: Dark green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Seed or sprigs/plugs.
Tolerance: Tolerates low mowing and is salt, drought, and heat tolerant. Very tolerant of wear, but does not tolerate shade.
Maintenance Level: Average.
Growth environment: Does fine in poor soil and heat.
When to Plant: Early summer.
Fertilizer needs: High. 4-5 lbs. of nitrogen per 1,000 sq. ft. per year.
Uses: High traffic lawns, athletic fields, golf courses, schools, parks.
Downsides: Sensitive to cold. Goes brown to dormant at temps below 50-60 degrees F.
Other characteristics: The Kentucky Bluegrass of the South in terms of popularity.
2) St. Augustine
Texture: Medium to coarse.
Color: Green to blue-green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Stolons.
Tolerance: Most shade tolerant of the warm season grasses.
Maintenance Level: High. Frequent mowing needed to prevent weeds and thatch.
Growth environment: Full sun to partial shade.
When to Plant: Early summer.
Fertilizer needs: 2-4 lbs of nitrogen per 1,000 sq. feet per year.
Uses: Lawn and golf course roughs.
Downsides: Not cold tolerant and high mowing, watering, and fertilizing needs during peak growing season.
Other characteristics: May not be the prettiest grass given its golf course rough applicability.
3) Buffalo
Texture: Fine textured, hardy
Color: Gray-green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Seed and stolons.
Tolerance: Extremely heat tolerant.
Maintenance Level: Low. Can be left to grow without mowing.
Growth environment: Can grow in areas that get limited rainfall.
When to Plant: Early summer.
Fertilizer needs: 1-2 lbs. of nitrogen per 1,000 sq. ft. per year.
Uses: Lawns and low-use areas.
Downsides: Browns quickly in midsummer. Not shade tolerant.
Other characteristics: Seed can be expensive.
4) Zoysia
Texture: Soft feel.
Color: Dark green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Rhizomes and stolons.
Tolerance: Drought resistance.
Maintenance Level: Moderate.
Growth environment: Full sun, well-drained soil.
When to Plant: Early summer.
Fertilizer needs: 2-4 lbs. of nitrogen per 1,000 sq. ft. per year.
Uses: Lawns, golf courses.
Downsides: Very slow growing.
Other characteristics: Forms a great looking, slightly prickly lawn.
5) Bahiagrass
Texture: Coarse, rugged.
Color: Light green.
Propagation (how it spreads): Short rhizomes.
Tolerance: Salt and shade tolerant.
Maintenance Level: Low to moderate.
Growth environment: Extensive root system that keeps it alive in sandy conditions and limited water needs as it pulls water from surrounding areas.
When to Plant: Early summer.
Fertilizer needs: Low.
Uses: Lawns, golf courses, roadside.
Downsides: Requires frequent mowing. Reel mowers are not recommended.
Other characteristics: Inexpensive.
Sources:
UMass Amherst Extension Turf Program
David Mellor, Senior Director of Grounds Boston Red Sox, author of “The Lawn Bible”