Which lawn grass suits a South Australian yard

Choose the grass before you fix the lawn

Most lawn advice online is written somewhere with reliable summer rain, and following it here is how people end up watering every day and still getting a patchy result. Our summers are long and dry and our winters are wet, and a lot of soil around here goes from sticky to concrete inside a fortnight.

So the first decision isn't fertiliser or watering schedule. It's which grass you're asking to live there, because that choice sets everything else you'll spend on it for the next ten years.

The three you'll actually be choosing between

Kikuyu

The toughest of the three and the fastest to recover from damage, so it suits a yard with kids, dogs and cricket in it. It handles heat and dry spells well and it'll fill a bare patch on its own.

The cost is that it doesn't stop. Kikuyu grows fast in the warm months and needs mowing weekly, and it'll run into your garden beds, under the edging and through a fence if you let it. It also browns off properly in winter. If you want a low input lawn and you don't mind edging often, it's hard to beat. If you hate mowing, it'll drive you mad.

Couch

The fine leafed one that looks the best of the three when it's in good condition, and it's very drought tolerant once established because it roots deeply. It takes wear reasonably well and repairs itself by running.

The cost is sunlight. Couch wants full sun and sulks badly in shade, so a yard with a big tree or a fence line that shades half the afternoon is the wrong home for it. It also thatches up if you feed it hard and never dethatch, and it goes properly dormant and brown over winter.

Buffalo

The one to pick for a shaded yard, because the modern soft leaf varieties will hold on with a few hours of direct sun a day where couch simply won't. It stays greener through winter than the other two and the soft leaf types are comfortable to sit on.

The cost is that it repairs slowly. Buffalo spreads by runners on the surface rather than underground, so a worn track across it stays a worn track for a long time. It's also the one that most dislikes being scalped, so it wants mowing higher than you might think.

Seed or runners, and why it matters here

Kikuyu is commonly available as seed and that makes it the cheap way to cover a big area. Couch can be grown from seed too. Buffalo is almost always sold as turf or runners rather than seed, because the good soft leaf varieties don't come true from seed, so a bare block in buffalo is a bigger up front spend.

Spring is the time to sow or lay any of them, because all three are warm season grasses and they need soil warmth to strike and establish before they're asked to survive a summer.

The things that are true whichever you pick

• Water deeply and less often. A short water every day trains roots to sit at the surface where they cook. A long soak twice a week sends them down.
• Mow higher in summer. Longer leaf shades the soil and holds moisture, and scalping a lawn in the middle of summer is how you kill it.
• Feed it a few times a year, not once heavily. Spring, the middle of summer, then autumn is a sensible rhythm for a warm season lawn.
• Fix the soil first if it's compacted. Grass won't out grow soil you can't get a fork into, and aerating before you spend on seed is the better order.
• Get weeds early. If it flowers it seeds, so pull it or treat it before that happens and read the label, because a product safe on one of these three can damage another.

The honest answer for most yards

If your yard is open and sunny and it gets used hard, kikuyu. If it's open and sunny and you care how it looks, couch. If a good part of it's shaded, buffalo, and the slower repair is the price of having grass there at all.

Nobody is grading you on this. A lawn that suits the spot it's in and gets a bit of attention beats the fancy option limping along in the wrong conditions, every time.

Shop related products

• Brunnings Kikuyu Lawn Seed 1kg. For a sunny, hard used yard sown from seed.
• Brunnings Tough Lawn Seed 1kg. A blend for a yard that takes a fair bit of traffic.
• Neutrog Sudden Impact for Lawns 10kg. The few times a year feed, rather than one heavy hit.
• Brunnings Turbo Patch Repairer 800g. For the bare spots while the rest fills in.

Did you know we also keep lawn aerators, gypsum, garden lime, sprinklers and tap timers in the shop, and a lot of that isn't listed online. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf, and the rest of the garden centre range is worth a look.

Read next

• An easy DIY hack for a tired lawn. What to do with the lawn you've already got.
• The best time of day to water your garden. The deep watering habit, in practice.
• What every gardener should know about testing soil pH. Worth doing before you spend on seed.

My lawn is mostly whatever grows there on its own, and I've made my peace with that.

Cheers,
Candeece

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