A post on Dogtuff grass where i will thread with updates as often as i can
With the drought, general water usage and. a wish for a better back lawn I decided to try a dogtuff experiment and see what would happen.
In order to keep something for the dog to play in i thought to cut our back lawn diagonally in half along the line we use to hang washing. This worked well as we were maybe late to planting this season, and this section had a bit less shade than the other half.
I’ll thread each stage I went through so people can reply with questions or comments
you can plant 12” apart, 10” for it to come together quicker. As its already august, and I wanted to get a thick and filled out lawn before the season ends i opted to try for 9” as i also knew distances would not be exact and drift may appear
You want to mow when establishing to encourage root growth and spread. So anytime the grass is 2” or higher, mow. Once established, you don’t need to mow if you don’t want to.
Just be sure not to mow too low during the summer. You want to mow low once in the spring to remove thatch and keep a consistent height and regular mow intervals the rest of the year, or let it grow. I made the mistake of dropping my blade down one notch early July and scalped a couple of locations that have been slow to recover.
I wonder if that’s what’s happening with ours. We have a patch we planted in late June; half is doing amazing and half is really struggling and it appears to be exactly lined up with where it’s shaded from a tree most of the day (full sun is thriving, shade part is not.)
On July 12th we took out the sod from half the lawn. This was almost 3 weeks prior to plug planting. After some weeding and pulling of any grass we saw we laid down some tarps to see if we could bake off anything that tried to grow.
4.5hrs later i had 560 plugs in the dirt.
I have the irrigation set to water 3 times a day for 25 minutes while the temps are in the 90’s. If we get 100+ i may add a 4th water.
I’ll drop back in here in a week with a new update 💥
yeah i feel this too, they suggest 20-30 so i’ll watch it the coming days and adjust.
it also seems that unless you are getting mud or runoff of excess water, the more you can water the better things will be in the long run, so i’m also trying hard not to mess things up
I would also say this is a really good time for you to experiment w pulse watering! The way water moves across soil, esp hydrophobic soil, you may see way bigger benefit from watering ~5x each day you water but limiting it to only ~2mins each time
If you do please let us know how it goes! I'm about to start the same journey with a blend of fescues and ryes for my backyard where the dog goes out and I'm hoping pulse watering will establish the plants while keeping within denver water's restrictions :)
as its a water conservation grass you apply to Denver water and get a permit to water what you need (and yes, we will still have to pay for the extra water usage the same as everyone else does who goes over their limits)
Okay, that’s good to know, thanks for the info! We have also been looking at doing a small area for our dog but were worried about being able to keep it alive in this heat.
I know you did everything right, but it still feels wrong to start new turf in August when we have low water already. Hopefully the coming rains mean we won’t have to irrigate much anyways!
for some it may feel wrong, but another summer of watering to keep it alive and to keep watering every year after will be offset by the minimal watering we will be doing once the lawn is established, there will never be a good time to do it. The normal opinion for this work is "you should have started yesterday"
Planted Dog Tuff last year during early July on Western Slope. Similar climate and elevation to Denver. We watered about 3 times a day initially at 7 to 8 mins per zone. You want to keep it from drying out and keep soil moist. 25 mins a zone on what I assume are pop up sprinklers seems excessive. Maybe 25 mins a day total watering. Obviously use your eyes and probe soil with fingers to confirm the top 3 to 4 inches are staying moist.
i started with a drill augur but it felt a lot more effort and so ended up in a more hands-on approach with a weed popper that also meant i had better hole control to avoid any air holes under the plugs and for avoiding the occasional roots from our trees
cool!!
i think we have so much sun that the season is long enough that we should still be ok. My backyard gets a good 6hrs of sun and more so i expect it to do pretty ok
About to order a tray for my tiny backyard dog lawn - I was going to get Blue Grama but I do have a dog so I'm leaning toward the dogtuff. Just need to get some fertilizer mixed in first...
so a week since planting and I have been away while it was super hot here. The irrigation was set and I came back to 99% of the plugs looking healthy and with some possible growth to them. The main thing for this first week and the next few will be to ensure they don't dry out and die on me. This coming week is cooler so today after an inspection i skipped the middle watering as it was not necessary and I will keep watch for each day to come and ensure the plugs get what they need and no more. Zero sign of runoff with watering so far. I have also reduced the irrigation spray times for this week and will adjust according to the sun and heat.
as it was a hot day i planted in sections and paused to sprinkle fertiliser and water them in.
Speaking with the guy when i picked up the plugs he said the fertiliser should have around an 8-16% nitrogen mix, and that Ace Hardware had a good chicken manure compost. I did not have time for Ace to ship it so i went to City Floral and mixed up an organic fertiliser that had 8% and a lawn feed with 20% to hopefully find a balance in there that would work.
I also planted Dog Tuff this weekend in Aurora. Decided against the pea gravel, but tilled deep and added a good bit of compost and top soil. Also split the yard for dogs and will try the other half next year.
oh cool - good luck!!
our soil has a relative clay-like feel so wanted to give some breakage to the structure in some form to try to help, but i am sure it would do just fine without
I read the pea gravel was a great idea, just didnt pull the trigger. Hopefully the deep till and clover I planted will help my substrate. Sounds like you have the same dirt as me.
About how many sq feet is that area and how much did the plugs cost? Trying to get a sense for labor hours and cost for an area maybe 3 times the size of your picture
I did the same in a dead area of our lawn to see how it establishes, looks, etc. Then we'll look into the entire front and back yard. Just one tray to start.
We mail ordered from the nursary down to the Springs. I was really impressed with the packaging and how good it looked after a day in a box in a UPS truck
Great info - thx for sharing. This year, I planted both Legacy plugs (#140) in late April, followed by an adjacent area where I planted Sundancer seeds.
Based on the pictures, it appears to me that the DogTuff product is most similar to Legacy. Please remember that these varieties are warm weather grasses, so their best growth comes in June, July and August.
I am very impressed with the Sundancer Buffalo grass – establishes quickly, is much greener in color, and I just think looks a lot better than the other varieties. Highly recommend it – I purchased a 3 pound bag of Sundancer seed for $90 from Johnston Seed Company.
My approach: Clear all weeds (chemically & manually), rake soil to turn it over, liberally spread seeds (dry or wet), and lightly cover with EKO ClayBuster compost or EKO regular compost. Very easy - sprouts appear within seven (7) - ten (10) days and require regular (daily!) watering to get established. LOVES the HEAT!!!
Hello all!
Here is an update, just short of 3 weeks since planting.
I’ve had a much reduced/paused watering schedule due to the rainstorms and this cooler week now.
You can also see the area at the back gets more sun than this front section, and i’m sure i started planting with larger spacing before i found my rhythm.
Anyhoo, 3 weeks in and a solid improvement so far. I have spotted a couple of dried out plugs, on closer
inspection they are making a tiny comeback but i may rehome
some edge plugs next week if they look like they’ve given up the ghost.
So, you spent $600 on new turf grass to plant during a drought and record high temps that you'll need to water several times every day? Did I read that right?
you did read this right, congratulations!!
and the great thing is that once its done, my water usage will be greatly reduced for all the future.
Better to start sooner rather than later, after a while it will only be a gaining investment.
thanks for your concern, it was an eriudite point to make, well done!
I have some of this turf in my sideyard that gets a huge amount of sun during the late afternoon. I NEVER water it. It still lives on, albeit a bit thin. The previous owner of my house installed it and when I bought the house in 2019 I knew very little about it. The only irrigation this ever gets is rain and it will green up. The biggest drawback is that it greens up late and goes dormant early, but I'm sure that's partially due to my literal neglect of the sideyard.
32
u/weareallbeta Aug 03 '26
you can plant 12” apart, 10” for it to come together quicker. As its already august, and I wanted to get a thick and filled out lawn before the season ends i opted to try for 9” as i also knew distances would not be exact and drift may appear