Well what do you know, UC Verde is both water-wise and fire-wise!

Dave Egbert, a firefighter and nurseryman suggests using UC Verde Buffalograss near your home to help protect it from being engulfed in flames.

“…a low-care lawn of UC Verde® buffalograss…can help snuff out firebrands that land near the home”, he says in his article on fire safe landscaping.

To read more about Dave’s article for a fire safe garden read his article here!

 
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It’s UC Verde in Orosi!

Thanks to Rudy Taylor with Taylor Made Landscape & Design for sharing these pics! It makes me want to quit work for the day and head up to the cabin now…

I’m sure just like you, we all have a lot of things to do – work, family, weekends…things slip our mind…

A couple of weekends ago, my dad gave a presentation at the local botanical garden on UC Verde Buffalograss. At the end of their event he packed up his sample trays into the back of his SUV and headed home…

…A week later as he went to throw his golf clubs in the back of his car, he found the UC Verde trays still sitting back there…all, week, long.

A week cooped up in a warm car is hardly the ideal environment for any plant, but dad pulled them out and gave them a good watering anyhow – and what do you know!?…

The UC Verde trays sprang right back up and are as good as new! Talk about drought tolerant!

Visit us at www.ucverdebuffalograss.com to learn more about this resilient lawn alternative or to place your order today!

And here’s a close up of UC Verde’s runners doing their thing!

We caught wind of a rumor going around that UC Verde Buffalograss will leave you with a lumpy looking lawn – and it just ain’t so!

Since UC Verde is planted in plugs, at first it will look like your lawn has undergone a hair transplant procedure and yes, it will look a little “lumpy” as the plugs begin to grow and spread. But once your grass has completely filled in your lawn will as normal as can be and lump-free!

Whether mowed or left au naturale, you won’t have to worry about UC Verde leaving you looking lumpy!

Visit our website at ucverdebuffalograss.com or contact us with all of your questions and comments or to place an order!

Spring is just around the corner and I cannot wait for the warm weather to get here!!!

To get your UC Verde Buffalograss ready for the warm up, mow it back to a height of around one inch. This will remove all the old yellow grass and help the sun to reach the soil and new growth faster. Since you are helping the ground warm earlier than normal, you will need to apply a pre-emergent or a fertilizer with crabgrass and/or annual grassy weed control at this time. Any product available at your garden center should be okay to use. Read and follow the label. Repeat this application at a ½ rate in 6-8 weeks for season long control!

Pictured above is a great UC Verde lawn shot from Chris Wilson of El Cajon, California! He says,

“In the lower left you can see where patch of competing bermuda is struggling with the summer heat. Not the buffalo! I’ve found that by mowing higher (2.5″ to 3″) in the summer, allows for much better moisture retention, and it really shows. In the spring I cut it to 3/4″ and it’s so tight and dense, it looks like a golfcourse fairway. Pretty cool grass!”

Pretty cool indeed Chris! And thanks so much for sharing your pic and tips with us! We’d love to hear what you think or see pics of your UC Verde in action too! Visit us on our Facebook page to share away

For more information or if you have any questions, you can also visit our website or contact us!

Oooo our UC Verde Buffalograss makes an appearance in California Landscaping Magazine! A Santa Barbara company, Wilson Environmental Landscape Design, Inc. won an award for the best sustainable landscape installation and part of their install included our UC Verde Buffalograss purchased through our socal rep Florasource!

Daniel Wilson, president and founder says, “When we got there, there were about 30,000 square feet of sod.” They replaced about 25,000 square feet with buffalograss and converted about 5,000 square feet into a succulent garden. “I think we’ve cut the water use down on the lawn by 70 percent. It could be more.”

To read the full article click here! And to learn more about how you can save water or purchase UC Verde Buffalograss visit our website or contact us at 559-275-3844 or info@ucverdebuffalograss.com!

(images from Wilson Environmental Landscape Design, Inc.)

Georgia was seeing brown in her established UC Verde Buffalograss lawn and contacted us wondering what the heck was going on! For some reason this year she was having pesky brown spots appearing in her Fresno lawn although she hadn’t done anything differently since the previous two seasons.

Her message to us: “On the home front (my backyard), the UC Verde buffalo grass is not looking so good. This is the third summer, and the past two summers it did great. In June there were two small dying patches, surrounded by healthy, thriving grass. Now, in late July, more dying patches and it looks like we have a dying trend going on. Through June it was watered once a week, and it gets full coverage; in July with triple digit weather I increased the 10 min. watering to twice a week. Do you have any thoughts on why such a widespread die back?”

And our suggestions:

• Use a shovel in the brown areas to see if the ground is hard and dry. This means that the water is not penetrating or adequately reaching this region.

Georgia used a shovel to go down several inches and verified the ground was hard and dry.

• We recommended she increase water to the dry areas. Basically, the lawn in those parts were not receiving enough water and the dryness triggers the dormancy mechanism in the grass. Often times this is due to uneven sprinkler coverage, sometimes it’s due to a heat wave (and I can tell you right now in Fresno we are definitely having a heat wave with multiple weeks of triple digit weather, back to back to back…ugh!) It will take about a week or two of increased watering and you should see greening along the base of the grassn in those dry areas.

Georgia put a hose-end sprinkler on it the brown spots and moved it around to give them a good soaking. She’s also increased her irrigation to 10 minutes twice a week while the temps are over 100.

And now her lawn several weeks later is doing much better! UC Verde is a drought tolerant lawn, but it’s not a miracle grass

It’s beyond hot here in town! Days and days of over 100 degree weather has us all clamoring for more ac (especially me, I’m 7 months pregnant!), but the demonstration plot out at the Clovis Botanical Garden seems to be liking the warm weather just fine! Enjoy the weekend everyone

Recently, Kristy from Santa Cruz contacted us wondering if gopher wire would work with a UC Verde Buffalograss lawn, since the grass has such a deep root system. While the wire is a good defense for gophers coming from below ground, you’ll still have issues since they can travel above ground at night and start burrowing. Try to keep them at bay until the plugs have a chance to get established and once your UC Verde Buffalograss is mature and growing they won’t be able to do too much damage!

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