Browse Forums Landscape & Garden Design 1 Mar 06, 2011 3:41 pm We're about to lay turf next weekend and had planned on buying Sir Walter Buffalo but a friend has given us the name of a company that does a soft leaf buffalo that doesn't come under the banner of Sir Walter Buffalo. He claims it's the same quality but at half the price. The supplier is a wholesaler who sells to the public. Yet to ring him during business hours. Would this lawn be ******* and not up to the standard of authentic Sir Walter Buffalo? Or is SWB just a brand and we're still going to get a good lawn by going generic? WDYT? Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 2Mar 06, 2011 6:12 pm Sir Wally is a great turf but it also has the most advertising dollars thrown at it to make it seem better than the rest. There is very little difference between them to the average punter. This site reviews all the buffalo types, http://softleafbuffalograss.com.au/ just be aware that the owner of the site is also a company in direct competition to sir Walter selling buffalo turf called palmetto and sapphire. From my very limited experience with buffalo the reviews seem in pretty fair. And here is another site with some info; http://lawncareadvice.com.au/lawn-varieties/119-palmetto-versus-sir-walter.html Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 3Mar 30, 2011 8:51 pm I was under impression that Sir Walter is the way to go. Now not so sure, but it's hard to distinguish hidden advertising from independent reviews (if they even exist). This site http://softleafbuffalograss.com.au/ definitely favours both Palm and Sapph over SW. But it does give SW 5/5 for Wear. However, I wonder how is the "wear" factor judged. This site http://thelawnguide.com.au/ also favours both Palm and Sapph over SW. Seems like it's written by the same people as per above . Apart from the official SW site http://www.sirwalter.com.au/, I cannot really find any other comparisons that would put SW in front of either Palm or Sapph. About growth rate: " trial showed that after 5 months without mowing Palmetto reached 112 mm, while Sir Walter reached 163 cm, .... In the Horticulture Australia study (Hal), Palmetto grew to a height of 19.9 cm in unmown sward tests while Sir Walter, Kings Pride and Matilda had a sward height of around 35 cm and Sapphire about 30 cm. " Another important factor for me are the edging requirements. Mowing the lawn "in the middle" is not so bad, compared to tedious edging. So, with its fast spread of runners, Palmetto is behind SW - possibly at the same rate as SW is behind Palmetto with its fast leaf growth. So, where is Sapphire in the edging vs. mowing (ie. width vs. height growth)? Oh, the important factors for us are: - low mowing req's - low edging req's - excellent wear - stands to full sun - has deep root system - dense (less tendency to 'cracks' and, god forbid, patches ) SW, Sapphire or Palmetto?? My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 4Mar 30, 2011 9:01 pm What about Empire zoysia? requires less mowing edging than all the above. I chop the runners off with a spade about once a month during the warmer months. And there is very little to chop... Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 5Mar 30, 2011 9:42 pm we have had both. ez was the worst lawn i have had. not very happy at all to the extent that we ripped it out from the front and now have sir walter down. after about 2.5 weeks and will have its first mow and very very happy with the results. its already bedded in and can barely notice the lines from the rolls. its also stayed green through our perth heat and soft to walk on would highly recommend it Harrisdale backyard finally done! Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 6Mar 30, 2011 10:42 pm Hello,
My first post here, my name is Steve, and I own and write for both The Lawn Guide and Lawn Care Advice (a Buffalo site still in development). I have no connection with the Soft Leaf Buffalo site. My sites are 100% independent. I have been in business in the lawn industry for 9 years, and have a lot of on-the-ground experience with most lawn types. as such I have a very good understanding of the different nuances and growth patterns of most lawn types. And I'll be the first to admit that that I am by no means the pre-eminent person on lawn care in Australia. With regards to the topic at hand…. Zoysia is my favourite grass type, very low maintenance, looks good, fine leaf, and very drought tolerant. It will never get ratty like other grasses when left unkempt, and can also be kept to masterpiece standards with high quality lawn care. It's best suited to warmer regions, and as a slow grower is not the best grass for very high traffic applications. I also have in my possession, the most definitive research studies of Buffalo grass ever conducted in the world. Undertaken by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, and Horticulture Australia. These studies were co-sponsored by all Buffalo patent and license holders in Australia. All recent Buffalo articles I have written have used these studies intensively to provide Australian homeowners with easy to understand and accurate information when choosing their next Buffalo lawn type - without bias. I must also say that I have concerns about the marketing of the some brands of grass. I am not the only one, some turf growers have the same concerns. I'll be addressing these concerns in the future, and only after I have received legal advice. With regard to my articles referencing certain brands of Buffalo, I was contacted by one of the highest people in one such company (I won't mention names), who was not happy about my reviews of his turf. In response, I gave him full opportunity to provide references and facts which could conflict with the results of research studies and my own experience with his grass. He could not provide a single piece of information whatsoever which could contradict the findings in my articles. This correspondence may be published in the future after I have received legal advice. This alone speaks volumes as to the accuracy of my articles for all Buffalo lawn types. I won't go into the Buffalo types here, too much info. I will have a new article soon on exact comparisons between all the most popular Buffalo lawn types for the Lawn Care Advice website. It's a very big article with a lot of research required, so it may still be a few weeks away. And while I will say that SW is a good grass, it is by no means the best Buffalo, the new article will be the definitive comparison in Australia between the Buffalo grasses based on scientific research and experience. I wish you well with your lawn care and your own choice of lawn type. Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 7Mar 31, 2011 7:01 am Thank you all for your comments and welcome Steve to the Forum (I hope this post will not end up being a one-off!). Yep, didn't include EZ in my ramblings simply because it was not on the 'buffalo' sites (understandably ). Seems a little unusual how it didn't work out for (at least) miss_petepie ... Here are some quick comparison charts from various sites (the second one put together by me, and please ignore the kike in the first one, should have deleted it ): Re. First chart: Can anyone comment on the "Mowing height" factor and what does it mean? Eg., they recommend (?) the m. h. for EZ to be a bit lower than buffalo - why? Also, they seem to think there is next to zero difference in mowing requirements b/w SW and Palmetto?! Re. Second chart: How is the "Sponginess" factor judged? By 'sponginess', I assume they meant how it feels when walked on, ie. how deep do you sink. BUT, if you sink less, do they give it less stars or more?? "Measures" like these are so umbiguous and quite useless if the author does not explain what s/he meant by each factor and what did s/he regard as good or bad. I personally don't like the sponginess in grass, but have no idea if the author felt the same way! Now, can anyone elaborate on the "wear" and "recovery" measures? I'm thinking that, for an average turf, the wear factor would be directly proportional to leaf growth speed (the faster it grows, the faster it covers up the worn out areas). However, for a really good turf, the wear factor should be largely unrelated to leaf growth speed (although I'm sure there is always a limit, you can't just wear out a patch to death and expect it to recover regardless). So, in all the comparison attempts by various people, is the "wear" factor simply translated to the speed of growth? How is the "wear" factor measured and defined? Also, would like to hear more about EZ and how does it do on heavy clays in full sun ... My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 8Mar 31, 2011 12:19 pm Welcome Steve, you run a great site, it would be great to have your expert input on all things turf when ever you get the chance. Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 9Mar 31, 2011 12:27 pm Lex, I have ez in full sun and clay. No probs at all over the warmer months. It also grows fine in dabbled shade from large trees. Its tough as old boots during the growing season. Although due to empire's slow growth it does struggle over winter in melb and goes dormant. So it wears poorly then and because of the slower growth it takes a bit longer to repair in spring. But again this is melb, we are talking about 1000km south with much colder winter weather. I would doubt you face the same problems unless you were in the far west of sydney, even then it would only go dormant for a short time. Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good? 10Mar 31, 2011 12:31 pm We just laid down 110m2 of Kings Pride. It looks and feels beautiful! Very similar to Sir Walter... We needed it to be tough as we have a dog & kids. It'll get a work out! Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 11Mar 31, 2011 1:06 pm my ez was laid in sept last year and with perths heatwave did not fair well. watered every day with a hose and then 15 minz on my 2 watering days and still didnt last.. havent done anything different with the sir walter and thats really sprung to life and doing very well. my dad has sir walter at his place for god knows how many years now and its the best lawn in the street and stayed healthy during the heatwave Harrisdale backyard finally done! Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 12Mar 31, 2011 1:22 pm [quote="miss_petepie"]my ez was laid in sept last year and with perths heatwave did not fair well. watered every day with a hose and then 15 minz on my 2 watering days and still didnt last.. havent done anything different with the sir walter and thats really sprung to life and doing very well. my dad has sir walter at his place for god knows how many years now and its the best lawn in the street and stayed healthy during the heatwave[/quote] Fair enough miss_petpie, tough conditions over in wa at present. For what its worth my just laid ez ( a few years back) went through a few tough patches weather wise including a 45 degree day and it had no probs. Different situations and climates get diff results i suppose, having said that i am glad the SW is working for you, not many people complain about it either over here, apart from the fact it grows too fast in summer. Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 13Apr 01, 2011 11:20 am Thanks guys for the input!! Any chance to get a few "bad" and "good" shots of the EZ, BxKiddo? I'm interested to see how does the slow 'recovery' look like. In regards to wear: We have one narrow section where I'm expecting higher traffic (but honestly, and worst comes to worst, we can always add some stepping pavers there, although I'm very reluctant to do that because of the subsequent need to edge neatly around every single paver! ). Anyway, the other area is the nature strip. There is no council footpath, but our street gets quite a load of foot traffic from all the walkers/joggers/dog walkers etc. (plus our postman's bike ), plus the soil in that area seems to be quite shallow - so we'd need something strong. The second thing important to me are the edging requirements. Seems that SW has the lowest spread rate (ie. its runners are tamer), so that sounds good to me. Although, the leaves grow faster than with Sapphire or Palmetto. BUT, reading again over that extract "trial showed that after 5 months without mowing Palmetto reached 112 mm, while Sir Walter reached 163 cm" - well, FIVE months without mowing, and only ... HANG ON - just noticed that they said 1.63 meters high for Sir Walter, and ONLY 11.2 centimeters of Palmetto - have they got their measurements right!?!?! I doubt it. I originally (quick-)read it as 16.3 cm for SW and 11.2 cm for Palmetto (and I assume that that's what they meant to write ) - which is a next to nothing difference (of 5cm) to me. Otherwise, if they really meant 163cm and 112mm, the difference would be 1.5 meters!!!!! My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 14Apr 01, 2011 2:28 pm A bad pic down here is a fully brown lawn in mid winter and a good pic is carpet of green in summer. Again competely different climate down here which is the major driver of turf growth. I think homeone member southies has EZ laid in Sydney maybe ask her for a better idea how it goes up your way. In regard to edging I have pavers set in EZ for the clothes line and its a dream to control. As the pavers heat up in the sun the runners don't creep over the face of the paver so the edges stay quite neat for a long time. And I can only add from second hand info that SW does run all over the place fast, BUT its so simple to control its not much of an issue. Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 15Apr 01, 2011 9:21 pm not a expert on grass but (you only get out what you put in) pardon the pun but its true. I have sir walt and i spend about 3 to 4 hours a week on it but? you be the juge. [img]Dec%202010%20063[/img] Cant get img to work fkn bin thats so 1980's smoo Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 16Apr 02, 2011 9:02 am BeatrixKiddo A bad pic down here is a fully brown lawn in mid winter and a good pic is carpet of green in summer. But I'm still curious about its quick growth. I almost can't believe it needs mowing every week (or two)!!! That is just way too often. Pitty I can't find anywhere the actual growth rate per week, which could give me some indication of the criteria they used to determine the "Mowing requirements" Also dons80, 3-4 hours a week??? That's probably how much we spent per 3 months (on average) on our old buffalo! I'm starting to think that "new product developments" are worse than what we used to be able to get long ago My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 17Apr 02, 2011 11:18 am I edge the pavers with a line trimmer, the ez doesnt throw long runners out so its easy to control. I have done it once over summer. In regards to mowing SW (or any turf) every 2 weeks or less, its so you are cutting only 1/3 of the leaf off to avoid the white scalping you get from mowing overgrown grass too short. You can let it go long as you want it will just look rubbish after a mow for a week or two. Also if no one is rolling around in the front yard why not keep the old buffalo? Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 18Apr 02, 2011 3:57 pm Yeah, noone is rolling around it, but actually the build destroyed all the front yard turf, although it seems like it's spreading slowly from the adjoining nature strip. However, the levels on our nature strip are too high (we want to trim it down to kerb level and also create slope away from the house), plus the nature strip has always been full of weeds. But what is the white scalping ? You mean it looks a bit uneven because the higher areas will be trimmed shorter and the whole lawn would look like tiger fur with all those various patches? We had a lot of that in the backyard with the old turf (but we sort of liked it ), if that's what you meant ... I'm just thinking that if we don't mow Walter as per recommendations, it would get all weedy . It looks like regular mowing does prevent weeds since it cuts off their seeded heads before they have a chance to spread even further. And then the buffalo deals with the remaining roots and eventually suffocates it (well, hopefully). ?? My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Re: Sir Walter Buffalo - "generic" soft leaf buffalo as good 19Apr 02, 2011 6:37 pm We put down about 77sq m of Sapphire Buffalo last month, so way too early to talk about long term issues yet but it's taken very well and looks great. I love the way it looks and it's fairly soft. It's in the front yard and the kids walk barefoot on it all the time. The neighbor right next to us put down Sir Walter. I'm waiting to see if there's a difference in a few months time due to soil prep. We followed Fu's prep while the neighbor just put his down on the sand (and whatever the landscapers felt obliged to add). I've dug some footings to embed a post anchor into. My holes are around 450mm deep which I'll put a 200mm stirrup into. The bottom of these holes seem firm enough. … 0 3301 9 24757 Thank you. Do I use timber floorboards for stairs or do people use timber treads? Or is both the same? 6 7258 |