Georgia was seeing brown in her established California Buffalograss lawn and contacted us wondering what the heck was going on! For some reason this year she was having pesky brown spots appearing in her Fresno lawn although she hadn’t done anything differently since the previous two seasons.
Her message to us: “On the home front (my backyard), the California Buffalograss is not looking so good. This is the third summer, and the past two summers it did great. In June there were two small dying patches, surrounded by healthy, thriving grass. Now, in late July, more dying patches and it looks like we have a dying trend going on. Through June it was watered once a week, and it gets full coverage; in July with triple digit weather I increased the 10 min. watering to twice a week. Do you have any thoughts on why such a widespread die back?”
And our suggestions:
- Use a shovel in the brown areas to see if the ground is hard and dry. This means that the water is not penetrating or adequately reaching this region.
Georgia used a shovel to go down several inches and verified the ground was hard and dry.
- We recommended she increase water to the dry areas. Basically, the lawn in those parts were not receiving enough water and the dryness triggers the dormancy mechanism in the grass. Often times this is due to uneven sprinkler coverage, sometimes it’s due to a heat wave (and I can tell you right now in Fresno we are definitely having a heat wave with multiple weeks of triple digit weather, back to back to back…ugh!) It will take about a week or two of increased watering and you should see greening along the base of the grassn in those dry areas.
Georgia put a hose-end sprinkler on it the brown spots and moved it around to give them a good soaking. She’s also increased her irrigation to 10 minutes twice a week while the temps are over 100.
And now her lawn several weeks later is doing much better! California Buffalograss is a drought tolerant lawn, but it’s not a miracle grass 😉
californiabuffalograssblog.com 
Thanks for posting this, I am having the same problem up here in Sacramento! I’ll check to see if the ground is dry and hard and then try soaking it if it is.
Let us know how it goes Rose! And if you have any questions along the way, don’t hesitate to contact us!
We planted our grass the middle of June. The backyard mostly looks great. I mowed it and raked the pieces over the spots that were not filling in as well – thinking that the water would be trapped more and be good for the grass. Was this a good idea? With our other grass I never did any raking, I guess because I mowed it more often I rarely saw the little bits of left over grass.
The side and front areas are not filling in at all. The front is being hand watered once or twice day – it looks green but isn’t putting out many runners. The side is watered with the sprinklers from the back yard (1 minute 5 times a day everyday) – not many runners either.
We put the recommended feed and weed stuff on a few weeks ago – I hadn’t read that we were supposed to do when we planted.
So my questions are:
Should I leave the grass clippings on the spots not being filled in?
When do I cut back on the watering? (It’s so hot! and the grass is so new)
Do you think there is any hope of the front and side yard filling in?
Thanks,
June in San Diego – by SDSU
Hi June!
I’m sorry to hear you’re having issues, we’ll try to help you get this all figured out! Would it be possible to send us pictures (ltakao@takaonursery.com)? What type of soil do you have? What sort of temperatures are you experiencing right now?