What to Know About Buffalo Grass: A Low-Maintenance Lawn Option

The ideal time to sow buffalo grass is in April or May. You may start it from seed or sod. Sod is generally made up of female plants to keep the spiky male seed heads from making an appearance. Seeded lawns will have both male and female plants.

Buffalo Grass Lawns: Information About The Care Of Buffalo Grass

Buffalo grass is low maintenance and tough as a turf grass. The plant is a perennial native to the Great Plains from Montana to New Mexico. The grass spreads by stolons and was first used as a turf grass in the 1930’s. The plant has a history of being expensive and hard to establish but planting buffalo grass from the newer cultivars have minimized these traits. With a few buffalo grass planting tips, you will be on your way to an adaptive and flexible lawn.

What is Buffalo Grass?

Buffalo grass is native to North America. What is buffalo grass? It is the only native grass that is also useful as a lawn grass. Buffalo grass lawns are warm season turf which are drought tolerant with better cold resistance than other warm season grasses. The grass is quite tolerant of a range of conditions and establishes with seed, sod, or plugs. As an extra bonus, care of buffalo grass is minimal, and mowing is infrequent.

As a wild plant, buffalo grass is an important range and pasture plant used by native and domestic grazers. It is a warm season grass that goes brown and dormant in fall when cold temperatures arrive and only awakens in spring as the air and soil warm up. Its busiest growing period is between May and September.

The plant forms a fine turf with bluish green color 8 to 10 inches (20-25 cm.) high. The blades are slightly curly, and the flowers are both pistillate and staminate. Plants root at internodes on the stolens. Buffalo grass lawns are very adapted to low moisture areas. Newer cultivars are resistant to weeds and require even less watering than the traditional buffalo grass.

Planting Buffalo Grass

The ideal time to sow buffalo grass is in April or May. You may start it from seed or sod. Sod is generally made up of female plants to keep the spiky male seed heads from making an appearance. Seeded lawns will have both male and female plants.

Broadcast seed at the rate of 4 to 6 pounds (2-3 kg.) per 1,000 square feet (92.9 sq. m.). With good moisture, this rate will achieve good cover in just a few months. Plugs are planted on 6 to 24 inch (15-61 cm.) centers, 2 ½ inches (6 cm.) deep. Sod must be moist before it is rolled out.

A crucial buffalo grass planting tip is to keep any area, whether it is seeded, plugged, or sodded, evenly moist as the grass establishes, but avoid sogginess.

Care of Buffalo Grass

This is a low maintenance turf and over babying it will actually cause it to lose vigor. Fertilize in spring with 1 pound (0.5 kg.) of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet (92.9 sq. m.). Feed the turf again in June or July with the same rate.

Water needs are minimal. The grass needs just a moderate amount of moisture per week. Mow once per week to a height of 2 to 3 inches (5-8 cm.) for a healthy lawn.

Since buffalo grass is not a thick turf, it tends to get weeds. Use a weed and feed at fertilizing time and hand weed when possible to remove competing pest plants.

What to Know About Buffalo Grass: A Low-Maintenance Lawn Option

David Beaulieu is a landscaping expert and plant photographer, with 20 years of experience.

Andrew Hughes is a certified arborist, member of the International Society of Arborists specializing in tree heal care, and reviews tree content on The Spruce’s Gardening Review Board. He founded and runs Urban Loggers, LLC, a company offering residential tree services in the Midwest and Connecticut.

Buffalo grass (Bouteloua dactyloides) is a warm-season grass native to North America. Its native status makes it the lawn grass of choice for some homeowners of North America.

Homeowners who enjoy growing indigenous plants can use buffalo grass as that rare, native option for the lawn. Even those who make plant selections pragmatically often choose to grow native plants for low-maintenance benefits. Having adapted to the region in question, they can fend for themselves to a degree that many alien plants cannot (for example, they often can get by without artificial irrigation).

Buffalo grass is attractive either when mowed to create a more manicured look or when left unmowed to indulge in the natural look. Leaving the grass untamed allows the grass to flower and go to seed, attracting wildlife such as birds and butterflies. Having the option not to mow also means a reduction in landscape maintenance needs.

Buffalo Grass Drought Tolerance

Buffalo grass has adapted to the dry conditions of parts of the North American prairie, to which it is native. It can survive on very little rainfall. If you like the idea of growing native grass in your lawn and desire the maximum in drought tolerance, complement your buffalo grass with the even more drought-tolerant blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis).

Pros of Buffalo Grass:

• Extremely hardy
• Very drought-tolerant
• Native to North America
• Attracts wildlife if allowed to flower
• Suitable choice if you want your grass to “grow natural” (thereby avoiding mowing)
• Tolerates heat well
• Being soft textured, it is easy on bare feet, making it suitable around pool areas if you are willing to mow it.

Cons of Buffalo Grass:

• As a warm-season grass it will not look good during the cold months of the year.
• Not shade-tolerant
• Holds up to foot traffic only moderately well
• It does not offer quite as smooth a surface as do some of the other types of lawn grass.

Planting Buffalo Grass

It takes a long time to establish a lawn of buffalo grass by sowing seed, so homeowners often start it from plugs or from sod. If you do choose to start it from seed, there are some tricks you need to know:

• Buffalo grass seed will not germinate until the soil temperature has reached 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But it is okay to sow the seed a little ahead of time if you don’t mind waiting.
• People generally sow buffalo grass seed from April to September.
• The seed needs light to germinate, and its soil should be kept moist (but not drenched).
• When buying, the seed package should say “treated.” This indicates that you have seed with the maximum chance of germinating once the soil is warm enough.

If you choose the plug method of starting a buffalo grass lawn, the spacing will depend on how patient you are. If don’t want to wait too long to have a lawn, the plugs should be planted about 5 inches apart. But if you want to save money and don’t mind waiting, you can space them up to 12 inches apart. Keep the soil moist until the plugs become established. The sod method is the quickest, as you will simply be rolling out the rolls of sod across the desired area. Again, keep the soil moist but not soaked until the root system has taken hold.

No matter which method of planting you choose, most of the work will come in the form of preparing the soil ahead of time. This includes having the soil tested and adding the appropriate soil amendments.

Care and Maintenance for Buffalo Grass

Buffalo grass may be a lot of work to get established in the first place (especially if you use the seeding method), but, after that, you will have as low-maintenance a lawn as you want to have. Its drought tolerance largely eliminates the need to water it. If you plan on mowing buffalo grass, it should be mowed higher (5 inches) than most grasses, so you won’t have to mow very often.

If you are attracted to buffalo grass by the thought of not having to mow the lawn at all, opt for a cultivar. There are seed, plug, and sod cultivars, but you are somewhat limited in your choices: For example, some types are available only as sod or as plugs. You will pay more for these, but they offer the best quality. Moreover, with some of the cultivars, you can get a plant that stays shorter (just what you want for a no-mow lawn). For example, while the species plant can reach 10 inches in height, the cultivar, ‘Prestige,’ matures at 4 to 6 inches tall.

Fertilize buffalo grass twice a year with 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet. Make one application in late May to mid-June; make another in late July.

Weed control is a bit trickier. It is safe to use a pre-emergent herbicide such as dithiopyr in spring. But using post-emergent herbicides such as 2,4-D on buffalo grass during the growing season can damage it. A safer alternative is to wait until the grass is completely dormant and use glyphosate for weed control.

Cost of Buffalo Grass

The more work you have to put into the planting process, and the longer you have to wait for results, the less you will have to pay. Starting a buffalo grass lawn from seed is the most labor-intensive and requires the most patience, so buying seed is the best bargain of your three choices. Laying sod is a breeze, and the result is an instant lawn, so you will pay the most for that option. The plug method is a compromise in each respect.

• You can buy 1 pound of buffalo grass seed for about $50. A pound covers about 330 square feet.
• The average cost of a plug of a quality cultivar of buffalo grass is $1. For example, you may buy a flat of 70 plugs for $70. If you don’t mind waiting for a lawn and space the plugs 12 inches apart in each direction, they would cover 70 square feet.
• Sod is sold by the “pallet.” For a quality cultivar, sod will typically sell for about $250 per pallet, which will cover approximately 450 square feet.

Yes. Buffalo grass is a good choice for a lawn, especially in low-rainfall regions where drought tolerance is a must.

Buffalo grass is difficult to grow from seed, but, once established, it is not hard to maintain. One of the virtues of buffalo grass is its toughness, a feature to be expected considering the variety of environments it grows wild in across the North American landscape.

Yes. Because of its stolons, buffalo grass does spread well as long as it is located in full sun.

It’s inexpensive if you grow it from seed. But, as with all lawn grasses, installation costs go up if you choose the plug or sod methods.

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