Other Updates to the Garden

I wanted to show some of my other projects through the backyard.

I planted some mammoth sunflowers this year and they are awesome! The breed of mammoth sunflowers are to get as much seeds out of a sunflower head as possible. The blooms start out nice and pretty, but once the seeds have been fertilized they increase in mass, and begin to weigh the sunflower head down which causes the plant to bend over from the weight.

View of my four mammoth sunflowers with the rest of my veggies. 

Ms Bumblebee fertilizing the sunflower

Another bumblebee. This sunflower was 12 feet tall

My best shot I believe

I have also embarked on building a cheap version of the texas tomato cage. Since space is at a premium in my garage I need tomato cages that can break down to store them easily. I looked up the texas tomato cages and thought they were perfect! Then I looked at the price. I'm not spending that kind of money on what amounts to basically well formed wire. So I sought out to find an alternative.

When I was at Lowe's on a weekend afternoon buying supplies for another project I walked by the PVC pipe section. A moment of inspiration hit me. Why couldn't I use PVC to make a tomato cage? PVC is dirt cheap! All I have to do is cut it, and then keep stacking it while the plants continue to grow.

The pictures show my results.

First you cut the feet/base of the tomato cage to a foot in length. Then you stack the layers of the cage thereafter.

Begin two sides in horizontal parallel to begin the cage. Then add an additional 6 inches in height. Then add another horizontal layer perpendicular to the first layer. Each horizontal layer is cut to 8 inches in length.

The basic design is every layer in one direction has a foot in length between, but every six inches allows a plant to rest it's limbs.

To anchor the cage I used bamboo sticks sold to anchor tomatoes. After building the cage up to 18 inches to 2 feet in height I'll hammer the bamboo sticks into the ground on the inside of the PVC pipe.

Other than that, my insistence to not use pesticides is makes things interesting in the backyard. I submit a picture of a spider hanging out.

Spider doing it's thing. 

Boomasaurus hanging out in his natural environment. Crushing my ornamental plants. 

Growing the Turffalo

Wow! What a difference a month makes. My Turffalo buffalo grass plugs took off! They went from pipsqueak plugs to full lush carpet grass. I don't know why more people don't use buffalo grass for their lawn. Under your bare feet it feels soft, lush, and fluffy. My wife may or may not have caught me laying in it with the dogs.

Buffalo grass plugs June 7th

Same patch July 20th 

Since my last update I kept watering the grass every other day applying half an inch of water. I did this for two more weeks until the plugs started to really fill in. I then took the watering down to every four days.

Boy the existing fescue/bluegrass I have in my yard did not like that. They instantly went into dormant mode. Within a week the edges of my yard looked like a dead zone. I'm guessing the fescue had shallow roots because of all the water it was getting. Now that it was cut off it freaked out. The buffalo grass handled it perfectly well though. No dormancy and it continued to spread. So well in fact that I've begun to slowly pull the fescue out of the yard. I'll take two or three bunches out each week, water the bare spot every day with the hose, and allow the buffalo grass to fill in. This will probably take another growing season to have a pure buffalo grass lawn, but I don't mind.

Second patch of buffalo grass plugs June 7th

As for care and maintenance I've been doing two things. I found a fertilizer by Hi Yield that is made for alkaline soils. It is 11% nitrogen, 13% sulfur, and 16% iron. Perfect for my soil type. I applied enough to equate to 1 lb of nitrogen for 1,000 square feet at the beginning of July. I'll reapply at the same rate monthly until the buffalo grass goes dormant. In between the Hi Yield fertilizing sessions I'll apply Ironite. It has the same count of sulfur and iron, but no nitrogen. You really can't over apply Ironite in a yard. Especially if you have alkaline soil. The sulfur will acidify the soil and release trapped minerals, and the iron helps with photosynthesis.

Second patch July 20th. Brown area in upper right is dormant fescue. 

The second thing I've done is allow the grass to grow taller. This will allow the buffalo grass roots to grow deeper. I went three weeks without mowing. The max height setting for my reel mower is only two inches. So I ended borrowing my neighbors gas mower which has a max height setting of 4".

I'll keep you updated throughout the growing season.

Growing Turffalo: The Epic Battle of Man vs Dog Urine

I wanted to share my experience with growing Turffalo brand buffalo grass in my backyard. 

Blank Canvas! 

A little background. When we moved in two years ago, it was a brand new home with a virgin
backyard. We had many plans for this backyard. We'd basically divide it into thirds. Concrete patio, grass for the dogs, and a veggie garden. 

At once I commenced installing all of the irrigation infrastructure needed to make our dream happen. This involved a zone of irrigation dedicated to maintaining a lush, but little grass lawn. The two main reasons we wanted grass was: for the dogs to poop and pee on, as well as having a soft cool surface to walk barefoot when headed to the veggie garden.

Mmmm... Grass

After installing my sprinklers, we proceeded to acquire grass. In this case, fescue sod. With my vast experience taking care of a lawn (none) I thought it'd be best to choose fescue. My rationale was since the lawn would be on the north side of the home, the vast majority of it would experience shade, and therefore we needed grass that would accommodate that factor. Boy, I couldn't have picked a worse grass. 

Finished Lawn! August 2012

With the experience of two years I have learned quite a lot about my yard. Firstly, while in winter the house does cast shade on the entire lawn, past the spring equinox, only about an 8th of the lawn is in shade for the majority of the day. Secondly (and what I didn't know at the time) fescue doesn't self repair itself like blue grass or bermuda. Lastly, to keep a fescue lawn lush and full requires more water getting the seeds started to fill in dog kill spots than it would take to keep bluegrass alive on it's own. 

Something needed to be done, and a solution would need to be found by spring 2014. I don't know what it is about home ownership, but once you have your half acre (or in my case 50'x120' plot) the need to have a lawn is primal. You see your neighbor with his lawn (even when it's smaller than yours) and declare sub-consciously I must do better! It's enough to drive a man mad. 

Lawn September 2013. Notice all the dogs kills spots

So I felt determined to have my cake and eat it as well. The rib of the problem is I live in Albuquerque. We receive a total of 9" of precipitation a year. I couldn't be selfish in my quest for a lawn. This is the fifth year in a row Albuquerque has been in exceptional drought, and I am nothing but a practical environmentalist. I know water is finite, and Albuquerque doesn't price their water supplies the way they truly should like Las Vegas does. I'd rather bathe, drink, and poop in water (not necessarily in that order), than use it to keep up with the Jones' lawn. 

So I researched grass types. I needed something that was self repairing, desert tolerant, and pretty. My search led to buffalo grass. Buffalo grass is native to the Great Plains with a range from northern Mexico to southern Canada. It takes drought extremely well, and plant researchers understood this value. So various plant scientists set off on a quest. Make buffalo grass viable as a turf grass. 

Naturally buffalo grass is a very blue green color, and doesn't fill in thickly like turf grass varieties. Hence why people normally don't use it. It is also very difficult to establish from seed, and takes years to fill in a lawn. During that time a home owner will have to constantly battle weeds when the buffalo grass is establishing itself. The last problem is buffalo grass reproduces with male and female plants. The female plant is great, the male plant sends up a pollen stem (most mistake it for a seed stem like blue grama) that's usually found unattractive. None of these characteristics are something a homeowner wants. 

When the researchers set to breed buffalo grass they knew they needed something that would be more green than blue, fill in thickly and quickly, and stem less. They've succeeded in a number of breeds which fulfill these requirements. The University of Nebraska has put out the Legacy and Prestige breeds. UC Davis and UC Riverside in California developed a breed called UC Verde which is suited to California and Phoenix climates. Finally Texas Tech developed a breed with a local entrepreneur for West Texas called Tech Turf sold under the brand Turffalo. 

Since buffalo grass has the same growing cycle as bermuda, I knew I couldn't buy it until May when the weather is warm enough for it to grow. Through my winter research I was resolved to buy the Legacy breed from Todd Valley Farms headquartered in Nebraska. My research would find it's a female, stemless variety, that could adapt to the high altitude (over 5,000ft) Albuquerque dry climate. 

So on May 1st I visited the Todd Valley Farm website and proceeded to place an order. There was a problem though. Most of the eastern/northern half of the US experienced a colder than usual winter. This put a damper on Todd Valley Farm's greenhouses. They couldn't get their plugs started. It was too cold and the temperatures were holding them back. The ship date slipped 3 times within weeks. First to May 15th, than to June 15th, finally it landed on July 7th. 

I couldn't wait that long! July 7th!? That's half the growing season for buffalo grass. I frantically searched, but Legacy is a unique licensed product. Most vendors subcontract Todd Valley Farms to provide it. I had to find a way. Through internet searching I find out my solution was (literally) in my own backyard. 

I don't know why I hadn't heard of Turffalo up to this point. You'd think with all the internet research and Google searches that I had done, it would pop up more in results. Honestly though, if you're a person from West Texas it makes perfect sense. We don't operate on google. We don't appreciate the internet as much as we should. Especially when your company is headquartered in Abernathy Texas. A company prospers on merit and word of mouth in the Texas Panhandle. 

When I went to their website I was jubilant. A buffalo grass variety developed by my Alma Mater? How could I say no? While they do include male buffalo grass plants in their product, I honestly didn't care. They were the only ones who could provide buffalo grass plugs to fulfill my needs in the timeframe I was seeking. I placed my order through an Albuquerque vendor, and felt proud I was bringing the byproduct of Texas Tech research into my home. (What more could a Red Raider ask for?)

Turffalo plugs rights after planting 

When the plugs arrived I planted them that weekend. I read, and rolled with the instructions listed. A half inch of water every day for two weeks. After that I dialed it down to a half inch of water every other da

y. I'm pushing up against a month at this point. 


The weather has changed though from when I planted. The first two weeks were relatively cool. Hovering around the mid 80's with decent humidity (for Albuquerque). We also had a couple of thunderstorms swing through Memorial weekend.  I looked up Wunderground stations near me, and we received an inch of rain. 

Northeast corner of the yard where I planted multiple plugs

My progress today is shown. The plugs are sending out stolon's. From what I've read on other blogs and forum posts, they are doing a decent job of covering the bare spots that I placed them. This weekend, for the final ten days of protection for the dogs I will do two things. I will apply Miracle Grow Bloom Booster fertilizer to the stolons of the buffalo grass. I will also increase the water schedule. I hope to accomplish two objectives. 

Another bare area of the yard I planted plugs

The bloom booster fertilizer is a 10-52-10 blend. I am hoping to stimulate the stolon nodes to root well with the extreme phosphorus content. The heavy application of water will also help the nodes root and establish themselves as separate plants. The entire campaign is to help the buffalo grass establish itself enough to withstand my basset hound. 

Makeshift Hadrian's Wall to keep the dogs out of the yard while the plugs grow

My dogs have become restless. Denied the lawn on which they expect to urinate, they have been cranky regaling to the mulched side yard, and in protest our carpet as well. I need this buffalo grass to be robust once I unleash the onslaught. Hopefully my theory will be correct. If not, the dogs will be denied their birthright for another few weeks in summer.