Plant the wrong grass in the high desert and you’ll either water it all summer or look at straw all winter. The best grass for a desert climate depends on which desert. Where winters are cold and summers are hot and dry, it’s a cool-season grass.
For most sunny yards, that means a Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass blend. Most of the lawns we mow are bluegrass, ryegrass, fescue, or a mix. Shady corners call for bluegrass blended with fine fescue instead.
Bermuda and other warm-season grasses do best in hot deserts with warm winters, like southern Nevada’s Mojave Desert. They don’t suit the high desert, where they’re brown from the first hard frost into late spring.
Picking grass seed for the high desert:
Cool-season grasses fit the high desert because they grow best in spring and fall and ride out cold winters. They slow down in summer heat, which is when watering matters most.
A high desert summer means dry air and strong sun on alkaline soil. In the Truckee Meadows, sprinklers also run on assigned watering days. The grass has to hold its color through July and come back after months of freezing nights.
For a sunny lawn that kids and dogs use, we’d plant bluegrass and perennial ryegrass together. Each grass covers the other’s weak spot.
Kentucky bluegrass is the soft, dark green lawn most people picture. It spreads by underground stems, so it repairs worn spots by itself. In a dry midsummer, it can go dormant and green up again later. The trade-off is upkeep. It takes a bit more water and fertilizer.
Perennial ryegrass is the fast starter. It sprouts quickly and covers the ground while the bluegrass gets going. On its own, it’s slow to repair itself and doesn’t take freezing wind well. In the blend, the bluegrass fills in around it. Neither grass likes deep shade.
Fine fescues are the shade grasses. For a shady yard, we’d blend fine fescue with Kentucky bluegrass. Fine fescue gets by on very little fertilizer but doesn’t stand up to heavy play, and a long hot spell can send it dormant.
Turf-type tall fescue is another cool-season grass you’ll see on seed bags. It often handles heat better than bluegrass and may get by on somewhat less water, thanks to deep roots. It also tolerates salty soil better. But tall fescue can’t go dormant, so it needs water to get through a dry spell.
Don’t expect big water savings from it, though. Watered to stay green all summer, tall fescue uses only about 10% less water than bluegrass. Our guide to drought-resistant lawns covers deep watering and mowing taller in a drought.
For a low-water patch nobody plays on, TMWA lists hard fescue and sheep fescue. Hard fescue has deep roots and takes a second season to fill in as a lawn. Sheep fescue is even more drought-tolerant.
For a sunny lawn, look for bluegrass mixed with perennial ryegrass. For shade, look for bluegrass and fine fescue. The bag should also list named varieties, not just the kind of grass.
Make sure the ryegrass on the label is perennial. We’d pass on mixes with annual ryegrass or “Kentucky 31” tall fescue. Annual ryegrass lives one season. Then it dies and leaves the dirt bare again. Kentucky 31 is an older, coarse tall fescue. It makes a rough-looking lawn.
Buffalograss gets sold as a low-water desert grass. Up here, it’s the wrong pick for a lawn you want green most of the year. As a warm-season grass, it turns straw-colored at the first hard frost and greens up in mid to late May.
Around here that’s a tan lawn from about Halloween to Memorial Day. Buffalograss also needs full sun. It won’t take heavy, constant foot traffic either, so it’s a bad match for a small, busy yard.
Bermuda is the one we’d keep out. In fescue and bluegrass lawns, it’s treated as a weed.
Early fall and spring are the best times to seed a cool-season lawn. In fall, aim for around the first week of September. The soil is still warm, nights are cooler, and fewer weeds compete. Seed sown then has all fall and next spring to root before summer heat.
In spring, seed once the soil warms up, and expect spring weeds to come up alongside the new grass. Most pre-emergents also stop grass seed, so skip pre-emergent on a spring-seeded patch. Our post on when to apply pre-emergent covers how long to wait.
Skip midsummer, when heat and wind dry out new seed fast. Late fall is risky too, because young grass can run out of time before the first hard frost.
New seed needs the soil surface kept moist with light, frequent watering until it’s established. That means watering off your assigned days. TMWA requires a 6-week watering variance for a new lawn. Our guide to the best time to plant grass seed covers soil prep and watering new seed.
Patching bare or thin spots is an easy weekend job. Loosen the soil, rake the seed in so it’s touching dirt, and keep it damp. Seed tossed on hard clay mostly feeds the birds.
A whole lawn that’s gone thin is a bigger job, and that’s the one to call us for. Core aeration pulls plugs from compacted soil, so the new seed goes into ground it can actually root in. For overseeding, we’d use the same bluegrass and ryegrass blend.
October is late for new seed. In Reno, the first frost comes around October 23 in a typical year, and young grass needs time to root first. If September got away from you, plan on seeding in spring.
For a new lawn, Kentucky bluegrass goes down at about 3 to 5 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Blends with ryegrass take more, because ryegrass seed is bigger. Overseeding a thin lawn takes less, so follow the rate on your bag.
Cory’s Lawn Service does lawn aeration in Reno and Sparks, and fall is when we pair it with overseeding to thicken a thin lawn. Call (775) 686-0123 to get on the schedule.
