Bluegrass knowledge

Rick Morain

I mowed the lawn last weekend. Temp was in the middle 90s, with heat index over 100. With a strong breeze, it really wasn’t so bad. But my mom would probably have said, “You don’t have the sense you were born with,” or something like that. Kathy fretted about it as well.

I have always thought about four inches was the ideal height to mow a Kentucky bluegrass lawn. So I set the mower blade as high as possible, as I had done for the previous mowings this year. With the timely rains we’ve had in Jefferson since spring, the grass has flourished. The lawn service I use adds to the luxuriant growth. When the grass height after a mowing starts at four inches and goes up from there, I should be mowing at least every week.

I haven’t been that diligent. And I don’t bag. What’s more, it had been a while since I had last mowed, and the grass was so tall that I had to stop frequently as the mower engine faltered. Consequently, after last weekend’s cutting I have some windrows. They aren’t all that ugly, I tried to convince myself, but they are more noticeable than I’d like.

In addition, I had lowered the blade a notch in order to lengthen the periods between future mowings. That added to the volume of the mown grass. I think the height of my bluegrass when I finished this last time was only about 2½ inches.

While mowing last weekend, I got thinking about lawns and mowing generally. I use a walk-behind self-propelled mower for the large quarter-block yard surrounding the house, so I had plenty of time to think. (We have a riding mower if I want to use it instead.)

One of my thoughts was to question when residents of towns, suburbs and single-family residential areas in cities developed their addiction to Kentucky bluegrass. When I finished mowing I looked it up, and found that like so many other traditional aspects of American life, bluegrass is probably not native to North America. It grows naturally in most of Europe, North Asia and in the higher elevations of North Africa.

In Europe back in the day, wealthy landowners would clear the ground around their mansions and plant bluegrass in order to provide a clear view of whoever might try to sneak up on them. The species likely came to North America a few centuries ago with the Spanish, and moved westward with American settlers starting in the late 1700s.

The blade lawnmower was invented in Gloucester, England, in 1830, and before long replaced the scythe and grazing animals as a grass cutter, first in Europe and eventually worldwide. In the U.S. the first gasoline powered mower was developed in 1914, and rotary blade mowers soon followed. There are now several brands of robot controlled mowers that require no human assistance; just turn it on and let it go.

As residential urban neighborhoods took on their permanent character, bluegrass lawns became their hallmark. Bluegrass is also widely used as the playing surface of many baseball and football fields.

A startling factoid is that bluegrass — poa pratensis — can grow to a high of 28 inches if undisturbed. My mower wouldn’t stand a chance.

The species’ common name “Kentucky bluegrass” derives from its prevalence as the pasture grass of central Kentucky, where it covers thousands of acres of that state’s many thoroughbred horse ranches. Its dark green color sometimes looks bluegreen in the right sunlight or shade.

For the past 75 years or so, 90% of the bluegrass seed in the United States has been produced on specialized farms, not in Kentucky, but in the Pacific Northwest states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Ever wonder where the term “bluegrass music” comes from? When Kentucky mandolin player Bill Monroe in the early 1940s formed a new band that played a distinctive type of country music using strictly acoustic instruments, he called it “The Blue Grass Boys” after the pasture grass of his home state. The name stuck, and bluegrass music today remains one of the most popular distinctively American musical genres.

Anyway, back to lawn mowing: if you absolutely resent having to do it, there’s a solution. It’s called “Bella Bluegrass,” a dwarf variant developed by the University of Nebraska more than a decade ago. Bella resembles standard bluegrass but grows only to a height of 2 to 4 inches or so, thereby eliminating the need to mow. It can tolerate drought, it’s resistant to disease, and it can thrive in high heat. It grows well in both sunlight and 80% shade, in both cold and hot climates.

But there’s a problem. You can’t buy Bella grass seed. That’s because is doesn’t start from seed, but rather from sod plugs which are planted about a foot apart. The plugs require constant watering for the first two months. So if you don’t like mowing, you probably won’t be particularly fond of the workload required to start a Bella lawn either.

All this info won’t be a surprise to serious gardeners and lawn aficionados. But it was to me. Not that it changes my behavior — I’ll still walk behind my power mower as needed. It’s important to me for three reasons: I take some pride in my lawn looking all right, I don’t want to end my neighbors and mowing my lawn is the only true exercise I get.

Rick Morain is a reporter and columnist with the Jefferson Herald.