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| If you have a portion of your yard that isn't well-drained--for instance, the grass gets submerged below water during heavy rainfall, most grasses won't do well in those conditions. Both zoysia and Kentucky bluegrass won't do well, for example. Neither will centipede.
On my neighbor's half of the side yard we share, he has an area of grass that gets flooded during tempests. You can see that his zoysia there is thinning out. He has lots of bare soil with dead brown stolons visible there. Correcting the grade would be best there, but if that's not possible, there are four species of grass that do better in submerged conditions than most species. According to Pennsylvania State Professor A. J. Turgeon, writing in his excellent textbook called Turfgrass Management, 9th Edition, tall fescue has a high submersion tolerance, second only to creeping bentgrass, while fine fescue has the lowest submersion tolerance among the cool season grasses. Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass are near the bottom too, just above fine fescue. For the warm season grasses, seashore paspalum ranks the best for submersion tolerance, followed by bermuda. Zoysia and centipede rank near the bottom. St. Augustine in the middle. Bermuda wouldn't work as a solution for my neighbor because his side yard gets a fair amount of shade. That leaves tall fescue as his best choice for grass there because creeping bentgrass ranks in the bottom half of popular turfgrasses when it comes to tree shade tolerance. Fine fescue, of course, is an excellent shade grass, but again, it doesn't do well in submerged conditions. So tall fescue would be a good choice for him there. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by dchall_san_antonio 8 San Antonio (My Page) on Sun, Apr 29, 12 at 13:56
| I think I agree. Farmers use tall fescue to hold soil in place in areas that flood occasionally. For example on a pond overflow area. One thing you have to really be careful of in a low area is nutgrass or nut sedge. It is a swamp grass and loves to be flooded all the time. I've seen it growing in rivers. |
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| I have an area that stays wet after rainfall so I used Seashore Paspalum. It did well until winter set in. We had snow that year and it didn't survive. I would do it again, but its too expensive now. |
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| >fine fescue has the lowest submersion tolerance among the cool season grasses I can heartily back that up. I have a few low spots between trees that puddle after the ground reaches saturation, and they can't sustain fine fescue at all... Which is another part of the problem in my front yard! |
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| Sorry for my long absence folks. I got sidetracked on 2 projects: house painting and flowery annuals. The warm weather was distracting too. My neighbor's side yard is doing much better now. About 6 weeks ago, with his blessing, I planted tall fescue there. It was Rebels brand. Wow, I like Rebels Tall Fescue. It's somewhat velvety to the touch; it feels smooth when you touch it, kind of like Kentucky Bluegrass, and it even looks a bit like Bluegrass. The bag of Turf-Type Tall Fescue was a blend of the following: 44% Rebel Advance Tall Fescue 0.75% other crop seed |
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