I am looking to repair my lawn after some heavy equipment tore up sections (building a garage and a front porch). I can seed anytime that's best. We have two dogs. No kids. We live in Wyoming. The lawn gets a fair amount of traffic from the dogs and us during the summer. Soil is pretty good. I am arranging to have it tested this next week. One side is full sun. Other side is shady. The most readily available seeds are a fescue mix, a ryegrass mix and KBG. Which one is best for my situation? My current lawn seems to go a bit dormant for the hottest part of the summer here right around the 4th of July. A couple of weeks of yellowing and then she's back up and running. Pretty sure I have a mix of rye grass and fescue right now. I water routinely, try to water slowly and deeply. Something I don't think many people factor in here is the wind, which can PEEL the moisture right out of anything. Mow about medium high since I have the service do it for me. What do you all think?

An alternative is to go with mix of prairie grasses. Mix them right and you can have green color all year long, very low watering costs, and zero fertilizer costs. bpgreen, a member from Utah, has a the following to say about prairie grasses...

Warm season natives. Buffalo grass and blue grama. Buffalo grass should be grown from sod or plugs (seed is available, but seeded varieties aren't as good). Blue Grama can be bought as plugs, but it's a bunch grass, so it won't spread well. Blue grama and buffalo grass are often planted together.

The advantages of these two grasses are that they'll stay green in the hottest part of the summer with little or no input. The disadvantage is that they'll probably be dormant from early October until mid May.

Cool season grasses:

Western wheatgrass, Streambank wheatgrass, crested wheatgrass, sheep fescue.

Western wheatgrass is a cool season grass, but it likes conditions a little warmer than most other cool season grasses. It's sort of a grey-green, but looks pretty nice I think. It's harder to establish than the other options.

Streambank wheatgrass (thickspike wheatgrass if you have sandy soil) will green up faster than western wheatgrass. It seems to go dormant faster than Western wheatgrass, but snaps out of it faster).

Crested Wheatgrass was introduced from Siberia. Most varieties are bunch grasses, but newer varieties will spread to some extent.

Sheep fescue can get by on the least amount of water, but it tends to go dormant in the heat. If you make your own mix, use Covar.

If you're going with a traditional lawn, I'd advise KBG. That's probably what you have now, unless you need to overseed every few years to fill in bare spots (from normal kill, not heavy equipment).

KBG is known as a sun-loving grass, but at higher elevations, it does well in shade and may suffer in the heat of summer. The reason is that at higher elevations, the air is thinner, so more sunlight penetrates.

Finding the right time to seed in the intermountain west can be a real challenge.

Where I am, if I seed in the spring, by the time it's warm enough to seed, it's only a couple of weeks from the brutally hot dry summer conditions, so the seed may not even germinate before it's too hot, much less get a chance to start establishing a root system.

If I try for a late summer/early fall seeding, the rule of thumb is to give yourself at least 6 weeks before the expected first hard frost. In much of the country, that gives a window of at least a couple of weeks and more likely about a month. Here, I think the window is about 15 minutes, if that. By the time the heat breaks, we're lucky if we've got a month before first frost. You may have even less time. Trying to seed while it's still hot is a losing proposition because you just can't keep the seed moist. Between the heat, the wind and the low humidity, the surface dries out as soon as you water (if the wind is calm enough for the water to hit the ground at all).

I've had the most success with dormant seeding. I seed at a rate a little higher than the normal overseeding rate, and try to get it down just before the first good snowfall of the season. The grass seed just sits there while it's too cold to germinate and the freeze/thaw cycles help to carry it into the ground. In the spring, as it warms up, the seed germinates with the natural moisture from the snow melt and any spring rains/snows we get. It generally germinates several weeks earlier than with a "traditional" spring seeding and may even germinate in some areas while there's still snow cover in other areas, so you're getting germination before you'd even get the seed down for a spring seeding.

If you go the native/naturalized grass route, I'd advise killing off the existing lawn first because the needs of the native grasses and KBG are so different. They'll coexist, but I think you're better off choosing one or the other. Also, if you go with natives, if you have sandy soil, substitute thickspike wheatgrass for streambank wheatgrass (streambank does better in clay).

Thanks for the responses so far. I really appreciate that you all took the time.

We did seed the current lawn back in 1998 and I remember using tall fescue and ryegrass combos that are available at Ace. We have overseeded occassionally since then and I am not sure what we used from time to time.

It doesn't deal with traffic very well and there is a large spot in the front that goes dormant each year around the 4th of July (our hottest time of year) for a couple of weeks. Once things cool back down she snaps out of it.

bp is totally correct that seeding time is tough here since the windows just don't last long enough between high heat and first frost or between start of spring and high heat. I will try dormant seeding.

Thanks again.

Rene