New Tall Fescue in NC seems to be going limp

14 years ago

Hi folks, this is my first time posting here and first time planting a new lawn. In early april I cleared a 2,000 sqft area, tilled it to 6 inches, added compost and topsoil, lime, fertilizer, then compacted seeded and covered with light straw. The seed was Rebel shade variety tall fescue. The area I planted is fairly shady. The new grass sprouted at about 10 days and came in very plush and fairly thick - better than I had anticipated. It went to about 4-5 inches and I mowed (about the 3 week point). Now, there are areas that are growing really well - thick and straight with thickening blades. There are some patches - 10sq ft or so - that seem to be excessively limp and tangled without the spryness of the rest of the grass. I am trying to figure out if this is a bad sign or not. There was one small area like that where the grass just went limp and died and it is now essentially bare. I couldn't see any obvious fungus, but not sure what happened. My watering schedule was 2x daily until the first mowing, since I have been doing once daily of fairly heavy water, but there have been no puddles. Could I still be over watering, especially in light of the shade? Any advice would be greatly appreciate. I anticipate that if the limp areas stay that way, they will die and I will be left with a very patchy lawn until I can reseed in the fall.

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Comments (4)

dchall_san_antonio
14 years ago
You are absolutely overwatering. Once the grass was in you should have started weening it off of daily watering and headed for monthly watering. But since this is the summer season coming up, it will be more like weekly watering until mid September.

Start immediately by not watering at all for at least one day in a row. Then water a little more heavily (longer) and see if you can go to two days in a row without seeing any dry grass. I water my lawn once a week after it gets really hot or dry. It takes from 1-3 hours most years. Last year was an exceptionally hot and dry year so I watered for 7 hours splitting it to 4 hours and 3 hours on Tuesdays at morning and night according to our local watering restrictions. The idea is to get all the water you need on the lawn at one time if you can. Then you let the soil surface dry out completely. It will become hard but that is the idea. Dry soil cannot sprout weed seeds.

And you probably do have fungus spots. If you want to handle that with a chemical approach, you'll have to identify the fungus first. If you want to handle it with an organic approach, you can spray it with milk immediately and then scatter ordinary corn meal at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet over the entire yard. Put the milk in a hose end sprayer and set the dial for 3 ounces per gallon. Corn meal can be bought in 50-pound bags at your local feed store. You want ordinary corn meal and not corn gluten meal. The organic approach will probably work but you won't see results for 3 full weeks.
tiemco
14 years ago
What was your seeding rate? One fall I overseeded an area too heavily and the exact same thing happened, it came in very thick, so thick in fact the grass was always wet, and in short time it developed pythium blight (matted and greasy looking) and died. A few things can be happening to you. You might have some areas where there was too much seed, like I had. I think you are letting it grow too high at this stage in its life. Most varieties of tall fescue tell you to mow at three inches when it is new, mowing it to the height of two inches. This will keep it from laying on itself, especially when wet, and will encourage tillering and thickening. I also think you are watering too heavily, especially in a shady environment. Your grass in the shade will remain wet for most of the day if you water heavily. There's not a lot you can do once the grass starts to go. You could apply some Immunox (Home Depot) to the areas, but I am not sure how effective it will be. Good luck.
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Billl
14 years ago
It was 94 this weekend in raleigh. Heat + new fescue is usually a bad combo. Spring is a bad time to seed in NC and late spring is even worse.
dchall_san_antonio
14 years ago
I agree with tiemco and billl, too. I think you have pretty full coverage of the issue.

New Tall Fescue in NC seems to be going limp

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dchall_san_antonio

tiemco

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