Could a recently formulated strain of grass make your life easier and your yard prettier and hardier?
It almost sounds too good to be true — but not according to Lakeland Horticultural Specialist Bill Koen, who brought it up at a City Commission meeting Monday.
“There’s one interesting thing about the landscape here at City Hall,” Koen said.
“We took all that Floratam St. Augustine grass out and replaced it with the University of Florida’s new CitraBlue.”
What’s CitraBlue? CitraBlue St. Augustine grass was developed several years ago by the University of Florida’s turfgrass breeding program under a sponsored agreement with the Turfgrass Producers of Florida.
“It’s getting to the point now where it’s very readily available because the sod farms have grown it in,” Koen told the commissioners. “So we decided to take out that grass that wasn’t doing so great out there and put CitraBlue.”
Why Switch? “CitraBlue is immune to all St. Augustine diseases including the bad one that should be here pretty soon called the sugarcane mosaic virus, which they found in Tampa a month ago,” Koen explained. “It’s actually lethal to (other strains of) St. Augustine.
“The CitraBlue is maybe something people in this community want to consider doing, to maybe change to this grass. The grass grows the same in the sun or the shade, the mowing is only half as much because the grass grows tighter and more compact … and it has a beautiful bluish tinge to it…
This is a real game-changer,” he concluded.
“There’s gonna be a big rush to get that on our lawns,” Mayor Bill Mutz said.
