I love my Mazama, its slightly shade tolerant, and grows very slow.

 

What do you see for a deep green color? Are you only Mazama? Disease issues?

 

My bio is the lawn about 1 year after i planted it.
You can see the entire reno and judge yourself here FuzzeWuzze Tiny Mazama Mono Reno
I had major disease issues last year. That said i live in a climate/region they dont generally recommend KBG because we are so wet and disease prone in western Oregon. I just need to be more on top of my fungicide routine.

 

I have bewitched in Indy. The color is not deep deep green during the summer unless you do FAS (on my high pH soil).

 

@Supergrass This is my midnight KBG front lawn that I leveled and reno'd last fall. I'm surrounded by TTTF lawns and mine was the darkest green of any of them until we started getting major snows. This was just after a clean up pass with the mower to get stuff off the lawn before I started to go lower with my HOC, probably at 2.5-3" with the Timemaster in the pictures. I was very impressed with the germination (I did pre-germinate and used Milorganite when it was put down). The sun is giving a dappled look, but the color is very uniform. I'm very happy with how it has gone so far. I plan to start pushing ferts to see if I can get to spread and fill in more so that by the time fall comes around I have the carpet of emerald green I've always dreamed about. Can't recommend it enough!

 

I have considered doing a reno also. I'm currently waiting to buy my mix. Midnight, NuGlade, and Prosperity. All of these are dark green in NTEP for me. I also looked at Mazama, Blue Note, Blueberry, and Everest. My mix were all ranked higher in my area than the others. I spent a lot of time researching best cultivars for my area. I suggest hitting up NTEP and seeing what their results are.

 

Very personal decision. Hopefully you'll get some balanced and varied responses.

A lot of people here seem to have trended toward the newest cultivars lately due to availability and probably a bit of an echo chamber/hype effect.

One major thing to consider is that many of the newer KBGs are slower or lower growing to various extents. Do you want something like that, like After Midnight or Mazama...or something a little taller/faster growing and maybe a little older?

I'm sure you probably used NTEP in the past. This is a great opportunity to use it!

Intersting fact about Mazama: it's a cross between both a compact midnight type and a compact America type.

 

Very personal decision. Hopefully you'll get some balanced and varied responses.

A lot of people here seem to have trended toward the newest cultivars lately due to availability and probably a bit of an echo chamber/hype effect.

One major thing to consider is that many of the newer KBGs are slower or lower growing to various extents. Do you want something like that, like After Midnight or Mazama...or something a little taller/faster growing and maybe a little older?

I'm sure you probably used NTEP in the past. This is a great opportunity to use it!

Intersting fact about Mazama: it's a cross between both a compact midnight type and a compact America type.

I have been looking at NTEP but is weird to me that midnight does so well for being an older variety. So, I'm pretty set on a midnight monostand but wanted to see others opinions. I like the low growing and low hoc and could possibly end up cutting 3/4" one day. Guess you can take the super from the short grass but can't take the short grass from the super haha.

I also do not have an inground irrigation system and I am entertaining the idea of tttf. Did well for me on the course but just doesn't have the color I would want.

 

Another relevant bit: Did you hear Bill Kreuser mention how some of the really dwarf ones make almost no gibberrelin, and they actually found Flurprimidol was making them grow faster in their experiments? Paradoxical effect, hypothesized to be a feedback mediated effect of some sort.

Not sure which varieties this was happening with.

 

Wow! I did not see this. Is there an article on it?!

 

@Supergrass

Hopefully you'll consider keeping a public copy journal on here in the journals section once the project gets going. I'd love to see how you do things and think through turf related stuff as a DIYer, but one who was (still are?) also a pro!

 

A recent 2021 study shows dwarf mutant Kentucky Bluegrass showed expression levels of PpKS were lower in the dwarf bluegrass than in the wild type, whereas the transcript abundances of PpGA20ox1 and PpGA2ox5 were raised in bluegrass dwarf . (Pp* control Gibberellin concentrations)

See "Differential expression of gibberellin-related genes in wild type and dwarf mutant of Poa pratensis implied their roles in regulating plant height" by Gan et al

https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/csc2.20502

 

@Supergrass

Did you also see this article in the past regarding various KBGs and how much they grow? Once again, Midnight is super competitive with most as far as maintenance needs, as expected...probably a nice balance of growth characteristics so it's not too slow either. New Kentucky bluegrass strain cuts mowing needs in half - GCMOnline.com Nice comparison of a bunch of stuff other than KBG as well, including some Scotts Provista KBG varieties, TTTF, etc.