By Jeff Floyd
Certified horticulturist and arborist
There are five easy steps to having the best-looking lawn on your block. These include selecting the right grass, watering adequately, mowing properly, applying fertilizer and controlling weeds. Even if your lawn looks terrible right now, by the end of one growing season you can turn it around without buying expensive sod or overworking yourself.
The easiest grass to grow in Texas is common Bermuda grass followed by St. Augustine grass. Zoysia grass is becoming popular because it tolerates our heat, doesn’t require excessive water and can grow in dappled shade although it may not thrive there. Tall fescue is a cool season grass that grows well in shade but doesn’t spread like the others, so it requires regular reseeding. Unlike Bermuda, St. Augustine and Zoysia, Fescue doesn’t go dormant during drought. It must be watered. Buffalo grass is native to North American prairies. It is the most drought-tolerant of all lawn grasses but doesn’t tolerate even the slightest amount of shade. Although seed is readily available, I’ve seldom seen it growing more than just a few years in a lawn.
Do not waste your time or sanity trying to grow grass in deep shade. When properly watered, all grasses prefer full sunlight. However, St. Augustine grass and Fescue grass will tolerate a modest amount of shade. If you already have a nice patch of St. Augustine grass growing under a shady tree, work to maintain it there. However, if there is bare soil under your tree, plant a shade-tolerant groundcover like Asiatic jasmine or an ornamental grass like liriope or monkey grass rather than a warm-season lawn grass.
Bermuda grass needs about eight hours of sunlight daily. You may have heard that some cultivars grow well in shade. Don’t believe the hype. While it’s true that some Bermuda grasses such as Celebration can tolerate more shade than others, the difference is not big. The most shade tolerant species of bermuda grasses require the equivalent of about five to six hours of direct sunlight daily. Even slightly dappled shade cannot provide that. Every year thousands of pallets of bermuda grass sod are planted in shady Texas lawns. Bermuda grass sod planted in shade tends to become weak and thin, eventually dying out completely within just a couple of years of being planted, necessitating the need to replant all over again. In a nutshell, Bermuda grass is your best bet when it comes to growing a lawn in bright Texas sunlight. If you must grow grass in shade, try St. Augustine grass before trying Zoysia.
Finally, don’t fall for rumors of a silver bullet. Every year researchers are surprised by a new cultivar of grass that performs well under special conditions. Before you know it, that grass is promoted to be the solution to all your grass growing woes. This has gone on for more than five decades. While improvements are made, they are always slight and never exceed the basic requirements of sunlight, water and mowing. We’ll follow up next time by talking about the best watering practices for your lawn.
