Grass Seeds for Lawns and Turf

ROBERT W. SCHERY.

THE PRODUCTION and use of seeds for lawns and turf have grown in a few decades to match almost any agricultural enterprise.

The volume of the marketed seeds is not quite so great as that of alfalfa and corn, but the land upon which it is sown probably out-values the acreage in corn and alfalfa.

It is an outgrowth of America's move to the suburbs; a desire for attractive lawns; an expanded highway program that calls for park-like rights-of-way; the establishment of new airports, golf courses, and industrial parks; and the continuing search for attractive turf for cemeteries, athletic fields, public buildings, schools, and parks.

We spend an estimated 2 to 3 billion dollars yearly to create and maintain about 12 million acres of nonagricultural turfgrass. The land value of this acreage is perhaps 25 billion dollars. Its seeding utilizes more than 100 million pounds of grass seeds annually.

Of this "lawn seed" (to distinguish it from agricultural usage), about one-third is of first quality mostly perennial species of attractive texture. One-third is permissible but not of top quality mixtures with lesser amounts of quality species and some coarse or impermanent species. One-third is of a trashy sort impermanent "hay-grass" mixtures.

The grasses that make up lawn mixtures originally were pasture species.

Many of us can remember how people scattered the sweepings from haymows around the farmstead to make lawns. This casual use of agricultural seeds gradually gave way to the sowing of better, cleaned seeds, packaged for lawn use even if it were of agricultural origin and to growing and harvesting seed specifically for fine turfs.

As the industry has progressed, standards have risen so that good mixtures now contain essentially weed-free seeds of fine-textured species, guaranteed to germinate satisfactorily. Some bulking with agricultural seed still continues in trash mixtures for mass-outlet sale, at a price, to unsuspecting homeowners.

The greatest market is in northern States. Species adaptable to cooler climates start readily from seeds, of which an abundant supply can be produced economically. Moreover, because of apomixis reduced sexual crossing the bluegrasses and lawn fescues maintain their identity well in varietal selection.

Seed sales in the South have centered mostly around common bermudagrass and, to a lesser extent, bahia, carpet, and centipede, with a little unselected zoysia. The improved varieties of bermuda and zoysia must be vegetatively planted, as they do not come true from seeds. St. Augustine, an inadequate seeder, also is planted vegetatively, as is much centipede turf.

The plains west of eastern Kansas have had no great development of the lawn types tailor made for that climate. There has been some commerce in and selection of buffalograss, a species able to exist with limited rainfall.

Several of the gramas, lovegrasses, wheatgrasses, and such have been seeded now and then for turf, but none is so attractive as the conventional eastern turfgrasses.

Because cities generally have enough water to permit irrigation of lawns and the use of the familiar humid-zone species, little commerce has arisen in specialties for and lands.

The production of grass seeds is detailed in earlier chapters. Here I review three of the major species as examples of how production bears on quality, supply, and costs.

Vegetatively planted southern species (like creeping bentgrasses for northern golf greens) must be dismissed with the mere notation that they are mostly nursery grown in their appropriate climatic areas. Improved varieties can be bought at turfgrass establishments in the South and the Southwest.

The three leaders are the blue-grasses; varieties of fine fescue, mostly from Oregon; and bermudagrass.

Domestic and perennial ryegrasses account for most of the seed going into temporary cover (as winter grass in the South) or the cheaper mixtures. Production of ryegrass is as much for agricultural purposes as for lawns, and I pass over this segment of the industry.

KENTUCKY BLUEGRASS was the settler's partner in early colonization. Production gradually shifted from the East to west of the Mississippi as lands became more valuable and intensively cropped in the Corn Belt. The only center of production remaining in the East is the section near Lexington, Ky., where tradition and especially favorable soils continue to make bluegrass and livestock important.

In the western district northward and westward from Missouri production of seed of natural Kentucky bluegrass likewise works in partnership with livestock. Seed is harvested from the same turf grazed or mowed for hay at other seasons. Experience has demonstrated the appropriate management of this ecological complex, so that grazing, fertilization, control of weeds, and suchlike have become perfected. Seed harvesting moved northward and westward, as the bluegrass volunteered on the newly plowed up prairie. Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota are important sources of natural bluegrass seed in some years, as are Iowa, Missouri, and Kentucky. Economic, biologic, and marketing advantages reside in the system that has evolved for the production of natural bluegrass seed. Use by livestock of the acreage during nonseeding seasons constitutes a sort of subsidization of seed production on what has become expensive, heavily capitalized land. Furthermore, most sods have lain unpampered for years, some since colonization. The diverse strains that result should be especially hardy because the,, have been subject to whatever natural selection there might be for generations. Midcontinent seed also is closer to the main urban markets, and so there are transportation advantages.

On the other hand, because bluegrass volunteers everywhere in the East and Midwest, it becomes difficult to keep selected lines pure if pure lines should be wanted for certain attributes. Also, with the multiple uses to which such acreage is put, it sometimes is difficult to manage especially for seed. Consistently high yields, which may reduce unit harvesting costs, are not certain. The cultivation of named selections consequently has moved mostly to the newer, often irrigated, lands of the Pacific Northwest.

In a few sections, Kentucky especially, some farmers may own their own stripping machines, care for the pastures carefully, and harvest and deliver seed to local cleaning plants. Green seed; fresh, uncured seed, which is subject to fermentation and loss of viability unless it is spread out to cure within a few hours, may be sold at a few cents a pound to the cleaner and be cured; dried in the curing yards of that company.

Larger farmers may operate their own curing yards. Sometimes they buy green seed from neighbors to supplement their supply. The cured seed may be sold to the cleaning plant or it may be custom cleaned on a fee basis.