In Texas, turf is the top crop, with 3,260,000 acres, far surpassing cotton (1,230,000 acres), corn (749,000 acres), sorghum (708,000 acres) and wheat (657,000 acres).
Lawns are the largest “crop” in the United States. Lawns cover 40.5 million acres of land in this country. Compare that to 9.7 million acres of corn, 6.2 million acres of alfalfa, 5.3 million acres of soybeans and 4.1 million acres of orchards, vinyards and nut trees.
The amount of water used on lawns each year is almost 50 million acre feet, or about 2 trillion gallons, more than corn, alfalfa, orchards and rice combined.
There are more lawns in the South than any other area of the country. 88% of Americans have a private lawn and 91% of those lawns are in the South.
About 85% of all water used in American households goes to watering lawns. In summer, that averages to about 285 gallons per day.
More than 80 million pounds of pesticides , herbicides and chemical fertilizers are sprayed on grass in the U.S. annually.
The typical homeowner in The Woodlands spends about $363 per year on their lawn and gardens. That amounts to about $12,000,000 per year – a sizeable sum. The amount spent on lawns in the U.S. exceeds $50 billion making lawn care a significant industry.
Gas mowers emit just as much pollution per hour as 11 cars.
A single healthy grass plant has almost 400 miles of roots. That’s about the distance from The Woodlands to San Antonio and back.
A typical lawn will have about six grass plants per square inch. Some lawns may have millions of grass plants.
