Turffalo

Jon – posted 07 October 2005 06:21

Does anyone have any experience (good or bad) with Turffalo (http://www.turffalo.com/)? It was mentioned on a weekly gardening radio show this week and sounds interesting. It’s a hybrid buffalo grass that apparently goes thicker to help choke out weeds. I’ve been doing some searches on it, but have only found mostly news articles and information from the producer. Haven’t seen any comments from anyone who has it.

Tungsten33333 – posted 13 October 2005 13:05

609 is pretty nice looking buffalo grass. Quite thick for buffalo. I’d get them for surrounding area if I had a big property to maintain while maintaining nice lawn (bermuda, st aug or zoysia) around the house.

wrangler – posted 20 October 2005 15:51

One word of caution, buffalograss will not compete well with bermudagrass. If you have bermuda in the immediate area it will invade buffalograss. I had a lawn of bufflograss in Kansas and just loved it. Very dought tollerant, easy to mow but it tends to have a pale green color that some people do not like. Buffalograss is also very slow to establish from seed.

Austin Turffalo – posted 27 June 2007 14:17

I haven’t had a good customer experience with Turffalo, and I don’t recommend it. And it disappoints me because I was very excited about it.

The key problem is that Turffalo requires HAND-WEEDING because it is incredibly sensitive to any chemicals, even those recommended by Turffalo.

I was told to use products with MSMA (and to avoid Dicambia, which is in Ortho products) to control crabgrass and other grassy weeds, but that was ineffective. I was then told to special order Fusilade herbicide at $85 a quart, and mix at 1/2 oz per gallon. That killed the grassy weeds and the limited renegade Bermuda, but damaged the Turffalo. The worst problem came when Turffalo told me to use ordinary 2,4-D on broadleaf weeds. Again mixing per the manufacturer’s instruction resulted in killing the weeds but severely stunting or killing the Turffalo.

Before planting the TechTurf and ShadowTurf plugs, I had spent 6 weeks killing off all weeds and grasses, and spread corn gluten pre-emergent herbicide. I have photos from mid-April 2007 showing only bare dirt and TechTurf/ ShadowTurf plugs.

Now in late-June I have sections of browned Turffalo, completely dead Turffalo, and some very nice Turffalo all in big “splotches” across my backyard.

If I’m lucky, this may all fill in by SPRING 2008!!!

Buy something else. Turfallo has been a big expense and a big disappointment, and the folks at Turffalo really don’t seem to care.

[This message has been edited by Austin Turffalo (edited 28 June 2007).]

RNorris – posted 05 July 2007 09:25

I just planted some of the Tech Turf about 10 days ago and so far so good. It is spreading already and all of the plugs are alive and well.

I don’t think it will cover in 30 – 45 days like they say (mostly due to me planting at 12″ spacing instead of 7″) but even with 7″ I think it would be close to 60 days or so.

But as of now I am happy with it. I just did a small area to test it and to make sure my yard will accomodate it.

rohoryder – posted 10 July 2007 15:27

I feel qualified to address the Turffalo issues. I lived with it for 4 years. I put out the first plugs over most of my yard and then last year during the drought and in the fall I planted an area between the street and sidewalk. I’m in Bedford TX (Dalls Fort Worth area)

Turffalo grew well and spread fine in the sunshine areas.

I dispute Turffalo’s claims about less maintenance. It does not develop a thick turf that controls weeds. Letting it grow to the full height of 5-6 inches does shade some of the weeks. I’ve spent lots of time on my hands and knees pulling weeds. This years invasion is by Torpedo grass and Image (MSMA) does nothing to stunt its growth so its back to pulling weeds by hand. Someone at Turffalo was not help at all about controlling Torpedo grass. All they would say was contact your county agent. The county agent said about the only way to get rid of Torpedo grass in Buffalo grass was to move.

Turffalo seems hardy enough. The chemicals used to control weeds do cause it to turn brown but within 30 days it seems to recover.

A previous poster said that the folks at Turffalo don’t seem to care enough to be helpful. That seems to be their attitude this year more than in the past. They get so many calls about weed control, I don’t think they have any answers.

I’m moving toward Xeroscaping and Turffalo seemed to be the ideal grass. I like the natural look but if I had it to do over, I’d look for a low maintenance, low water grass other than Turffalo.

Bottom line, Turffalo is a high maintenance grass because of the weed problem. Pre-emergence is absolutely necessary to control some types of weeks but then each year you get an invasion of something you didn’t have before.

RNorris – posted 11 July 2007 09:42

Rohoryder,

Thanks for the additional input. I will watch for those issues. I only planted 2 flats of it due to wanting to see how it would do. It was either that or St. Augustine. I am thinking of planting some St. Aug and then just letting the best grass win.

So far 3 weeks into the plugs they are doing excellent and have some seed heads on them so they look healthy.

I tried the grass to help with weeds and to be low maintenance which it sounds like it might not be. My backyard is going to be an issue do to trees and drought so it made sense. But with only 2 flats, I haven’t lost too much money or time.

Thanks again for the info,

[This message has been edited by RNorris (edited 11 July 2007).]

shoreturf – posted 30 March 2008 11:13

Turffalo must be hand weeded and this is labor intensive.Everything I’ve tried to kill the weeds has just killed the grass. I’m glad I have so little of it.