How To Develop A Low Maintenance Lawn

If you are a busy person, then the last thing you probably want is a high maintenance lawn. It is possible to migrate your lawn from a high maintenance grass to a low maintenance grass. It should be remembered that most great looking lawns are high maintenance, so you may have to accept a lesser quality lawn for that low maintenance benefit. If you take the migration method, you will need several seasons before you gain the most benefit. The alternative is to rip up your lawn and to start all over using a low maintenance grass type. Low maintenance grasses include:

Fine-leaf Fescue: best suited to cool zone lawns. The down-side to a Fine Fescue is that it is not traffic tolerant. However, Fine Fesuces are drought resistant and shade tolerant.

Tall Fescue: best suited to transition zone lawns. Good drought resistance and better able to tolerate traffic than a Fine Fescue.

Bahia Grass: best suited to warm zone lawns. Bahia grows quite low so it doesn’t require a lot of mowing. Develops a good thick turf that fends off weeds and some insects.

Buffalograss: best suited to warm zone lawns. A native grass that is drought tolerant, however, it does turn brown during very hot or very cold weather. Buffalograss is not very tolerant of traffic either.

Centipedegrass: best suited to warm zones. Low growing but fast spreading grass that requires little fertilizer or mowing. Some consider this a weed so you will need to maintain good control around the borders or it will grow into your garden beds. Will turn brown in summer and does require a little extra water when it’s hot and dry.

Fescues are generally best mixed with other grasses to obtain a good lawn. Centipedegrass does not like cold weather and frosts can damage leaves and the root systems of young plants. In areas that don’t suffer from frosts, it is one of the better low maintenance grasses.

You can migrate from high maintenance to low maintenance grasses by over sowing each fall and spring with a low maintenance grass seed. Use a lawn seeding tool to make quick and effective work of the over seeding process.