Calculators Which grass is it?
What grass do I have?
Answer what you can and skip anything you are unsure of. Worth getting right, because how much you feed, when you feed and which weed killers are safe all hang off it.
Two checks separate most Perth lawns: pull up a runner, then look at the tip of a blade. Broad blades with a rounded, boat-shaped tip is buffalo. Coarse and into the garden beds by February is kikuyu. Fine and browns off over winter is couch. Fine, stiff and slow is zoysia.
Worth getting right, because it changes the numbers. Couch wants around 2.5kg of nitrogen per 100m² a year, zoysia about 1.8kg. Feed zoysia like couch and you are nearly 40 percent over.
The longer version
Buffalo
Broad blades, 7mm or more, rounded tip folded into a boat shape. Holds colour through winter better than the others. Sensitive to some broadleaf herbicides, so check the label says buffalo safe before you spray.
Kikuyu
Coarse, mid-green, spreads by thick runners across the surface. If your lawn is in the garden beds and halfway up the fence by February, it is kikuyu.
Couch
Fine-bladed and dense, spreads above and below the soil. Browns off properly over winter, which worries people every year and never needs to.
Zoysia
Fine to medium, stiff and springy underfoot, noticeably slow. If you are mowing fortnightly in January and keeping up, look at zoysia.
Fescue and rye
Cool season. They grow in clumps rather than runners and they are greener in July than January, the opposite of everything else here. Uncommon as a Perth lawn, common as a winter over-seed.
The app does this and keeps score
This narrows it down once. The lawn app holds your lawn's details so you never re-enter them, and it tracks the nitrogen you have already put down this year so later doses shrink instead of pushing you over the cap. Free, no account, works offline.