Seeded Buffalograss

What Makes It Different

Seed is the cheap route, and the reason it exists at all is that buffalograss carries male and female flowers on separate plants. A bag of seed gives you roughly half of each. Female plants tuck their burs down at the soil where you’ll never see them. Males do the opposite — they push flag-like stalks three to eight inches above the canopy all summer. A stand that would otherwise sit flat and even goes ragged, and the only fix is mowing: every one to two weeks in summer, purely to cut the stalks off. You aren’t mowing for height. You’re mowing for looks.

What you buy with that nuisance is scale. Seed runs about $30 to $42 a pound and you need 2 to 3 pounds per 1,000 square feet — 3 to 5 if you want fast cover in an arid climate. Live plants can’t touch that on a big lot, and seed ships anywhere, while sod and plugs depend on a grower near you.

The other thing seed gives you is genetic mix, which is why these lawns are planted as multi-cultivar blends — pairing a chinch-bug-resistant cultivar with a high-density one spreads the risk. The cost is uniformity: color, blade width and growth rate all vary a little across the lawn.

Who It’s For

Large lots, tight budgets and patience. Full cover from seed takes 90 to 120 days, and you should plan on heavy weed pressure — crabgrass, foxtail, sandbur — through the first two seasons while the stand is still open. If you want a finished lawn this year, or a front yard that reads as manicured, the clone pages are the better fit. If you have half an acre of dry ground and a hose you’d rather not use, this is the one.

The Cultivars

What Changes In Care

Mowing is the only lasting change: every one to two weeks through summer to keep seedheads down, rather than the every-two-to-four-weeks on the type page. Height, feeding and watering all follow the parent grass unchanged.

The first year is the exception. A new seeded stand is chemically touchy in a way an established one isn’t, because most pre-emergents stop buffalograss roots as effectively as weed roots. Dithiopyr waits until the second year, pendimethalin until four mowings or 90 days, and prodiamine at least 60 days — applied at seeding, prodiamine can cut final cover below 10 percent. Feed about six weeks after the seedlings emerge, and keep 2,4-D off the lawn entirely for the whole first year.

Before You Buy

• Turf-type or forage — this is the trap. ‘Texoka’ and ‘Sharp’s Improved’ are pasture and reclamation seed. They grow 8 to 12 inches tall, coarse and open, and never knit into a lawn, while turf types stay prostrate at 3 to 5 inches and run stolons that close the ground. Retailers make this easy to get wrong: at least one seed house lists ‘Texoka’ and ‘Sharps Imp II’ in the same dropdown as ‘Bowie’, ‘Cody’ and ‘Sundancer’ under one generic “Buffalograss” heading, with nothing marking the difference. If the label doesn’t say turf-type, don’t buy it.
• Buy treated seed. Raw burs have a woody coat and natural germination inhibitors, and they come up under 30 percent of the time, scattered over weeks. Commercial pre-treatment — a potassium nitrate soak and five to six weeks of moist chilling — lifts that to 80 to 90 percent and brings emergence down to 5 to 10 days. Look for treated, primed, chilled or deburred on the label. It adds roughly $0.50 to $3.00 a pound and it is the best money you’ll spend on this lawn.
• Watch the calendar. Soil has to be 60°F or warmer, so late May into June. Seed after about August 1 in the west, or August 15 in the eastern transition, and the young stand won’t harden off before frost — it sprouts, then winterkills.
• Check what a “pound” means. Some sellers price certified bulk seed and others price pure live seed, and a PLS pound carries more viable seed. Compare like with like before deciding anything is expensive.
• Native mixes are a legitimate route here. The buffalograss-and-blue-grama mix the type page covers is sold ready-made, and Habiturf — 62% buffalograss, 30% blue grama, 8% curly mesquite — is the Southwest version.
• If you’re clearing an old lawn first, don’t assume a consumer “Roundup”-branded product still contains glyphosate. The brand now covers several different active ingredients, so read the active-ingredient panel and match the chemistry to the job before you spray.