The Softest Cool-Season Grass To Grow For A Lush Barefoot Type Of Lawn

If you're the kind of lawn owner who does not only like admiring their lawn's aesthetic beauty but also loves feeling its lush, comforting touch to the skin, you probably know how much difference even the minutest details in the quality of the grass can make. Although different types of grass seeds offer different advantages, if you live in the northern half of the country, a cool-season grass is best to stand up to the requirements of the weather. Enter Kentucky bluegrass: A grass variety that ticks all of these boxes. While giving you the most luxurious barefoot experience with its fine-textured, ultra-soft, and rich green blade Kentucky bluegrass is also one of the best grasses for places with cooler weather.

Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), also popularly known by its acronym KBG, is a perennial grass species that is both visually stunning and tactilely soothing. Given the name, it might be tempting to think that the grass originally belongs to the state of Kentucky, but its origin story takes it from Europe and Northern Asia. Before this grass ever became a nationwide hit from coast to coast, it first gained a lot of popularity in Kentucky as pasture grass, and hence the name. Ideally, Kentucky bluegrass likes to have plenty of sun. However, since it can also tolerate some shade, and growing a lush lawn in shade often becomes a breeze with the help of careful fertilization, some gardeners try to grow it alongside other shade-tolerant varieties to have the best of both worlds. 

Kentucky bluegrass is hardy in USDA Hardiness zones 3 to 9. Considering that it is a cool-season grass, planting KBG during the fall for best growth is a no-brainer. The grass performs best during the cool seasons of spring, fall, and winter, particularly in regions that experience cold winters and mild summers. For the same reason, it does not perform as well during extremely hot summers, such as in states like California. The optimum height to mow this grass is around 2 inches; if cut shorter it starts becoming susceptible to diseases. Having said that, there are some dwarf varieties which can be mowed as low as ¾ inches. When it comes to water requirements, this grass is not too finicky, and one to three irrigations a week works fine for a healthy lawn. The grass shows some level of stress tolerance against drought, especially when it is still young, but prolonged stress can make it enter dormancy early.

Fertilizing can be tricky with Kentucky bluegrass. The grass often performs best with moderate amounts of nitrogen, but some of the newer cultivars may tolerant high levels of this nutrient. Giving too much nitrogen to the common varieties can lead to diseases like leaf spot or increase the risk of pest infestations. On the other hand, too little nitrogen can result in stripe rust in certain compact cultivars. Given this wild confusion, you need to always be careful while selecting the right fertilizer for the Kentucky bluegrass variety you are growing in your lawn.

While it is a great cool-season grass for barefoot lawns, Kentucky bluegrass is not low-maintenance, and can be prone to a number of diseases. Fairy ring is a fungal infection that happens particularly during spring season, invigorated by the moisture in the soil, and appears as dark green or brown circular rings in the turf. Deep watering of the infested area can help manage the condition. If the infection seems beyond repair, say, such that even a boost in fertilizer would seem difficult to promote fresh, healthy new growth, consider completely removing the infected area and putting in brand new soil in its place.

Rust is another common condition in Kentucky bluegrass. It starts appearing first in shaded regions in the lawn as yellow flecks, which eventually turn into rust-colored pustules. One of the telltale signs that you can use to spot this disease is the appearance of these pustules on your shoes when you walk through infected grass. You can effectively manage this condition by adding a nitrogen fertilizer during periods of slow growth of this grass, so that new growth outpaces the rust-infected portion of the lawn. 

Other major diseases that can take away from the serenity of your KBG lawn include summer patch, leaf spot, powdery mildew, and red thread. Most of the time, following good lawn care practices, such as maintaining proper watering (without keeping the grass too wet), aeration, and fertilizing can help manage such conditions. You can also consider growing more resistant cultivars that are in better equipped against these major diseases. Growing perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) alongside KBG can also make the overall turf more disease-resistant.