Keith, I will stay away from Zoysia if I were you. If light foot traffic and in semi shade, then Fine Fescue is your friend. Even Tall Fescue will grow under those conditions. Zoysia suffers from winterkill here in Raleigh, as well as disease. Fairy Ring seems to be Cavalier's worst enemy when over fertilized. When damage occurs, you can't just throw some seed down and fix it, you either buy new sod, plug, or wait the entire season if not longer for the grass to repair itself. Bermuda is no better, and it get's bombarded by all kinds of weeds due its low density canopy and long dormancy period. The few Zoysia lawns people plant here to replace fescue look good the first year, then it turns to crap (excuse my French) the following years. Some spend tons of $$$ on Fungicide, fertilizers, Surfactants, sprayers, iron, organic, compost, dethatching, reel mower, etc, to try to rescue/save their "investment" The few good looking Zoysias around here are the ones at Golf Courses with Golf Course budget, knowledge, and maintenance. Save your money and efford put some seed down in the Fall, UNLESS you love warm season grasses and you have to have it then go for it - but you've been warned. Zoysia grasses are tropical in nature, the weather in V.A. is anything but tropical. Click on the link for more info Zoysia/Bermuda winterkill: Here is a link that might be useful: Zoysia and Bermuda Winterkill

I have the same issue w my el toro zoysia, I've given up on treating it and a waiting til next spring to see if it emerges from dormancy.

I'm in Pensacola, Fl (though I'm not really new anymore!!). We had 36 pallets (yep! ..a lot!) of El Toro installed in the Spring of 2010, and it is/was INCREDIBlY beautiful. But I've had my ups & downs. The ups are that I treated it organically only, so far, by not using any chemicals, but I did fertilize it 3 times over the spring and summer with rabbit food pellets (alfalfa pellets). The alfalfa pellets helped the roots take exceptionally fast, except along the house where there's shade, and under 2 large oak trees, where there's only about 4 hours of sun/day. So, where I had a lot of sun, and had put down alfalfa, it grew TOO well!! I was mowing twice per week, and (are you sitting down?) I was doing all this all summer long with a Fiskars Reel mower, the new orange one that came out that throws the grass forward, with NO catcher!!) Let's just say I was always mowing!! Every day, I would mow for about 1-2 hours, and use that as my exercise. After the large $$$ investment in the grass, I didn't see fit to buy a riding mower....just yet anyway. Actually, I LOVE the Fiskars mower, but I have almost an acre, and if the grass would grow more slowly, I think I'd be ok with it. So, although it greened up and took root, and was LUSH and THICK and quite possibly the prettiest grass in all of Pensacola, the down-side is that I don't think I can possibly repeat all that work again this coming summer. And the 1 other main problem I had was my own fault. On July 1st, with family/friends coming over for the July 4th weekend, I decided to cut the grass short so I wouldn't have to mow for the whole upcoming week. MAJOR MISTAKE!! I cut the 3" grass down to about 1". It looked FANTASTIC for the next week...and then, boom! It all turned brown! It took about 3 weeks for all of it to come back green again, but meanwhile, the weeds crept in, especially in the shaded areas under my 2 oak trees in the front yard. The side yards and back are in full sun, and though some weeds did get in, there aren't too many that I probably couldn't go in and hand-pull. But the weeds in the shaded area in the front yard (for all my inquisitive neighbors to gawk at) are getting worse throughout the winter and have pretty much taken over the zoysia. My question would be, when and what should I do, for either/or a pre-emergent, and/or post-emergent, even though I hate using chemicals. The alfalfa pellets were so amazing and even my roses and flowers on side beds were phenomenal, once I used alfalfa. I do have very sandy soil, and have been warned that if I ever go to using chemicals, I will kill off the GOOD nematodes, and will end up helping the BAD nematodes, and once I have the bad nematodes, this grass is pretty much a permanent bye-bye!! (Another neighbor about 10 yrs ago lost all his zoysia to bad nematodes) The only other problem I've had over the last 6 months or so, are mole hills and tunnels, and I've heard that I can use dishwashing soap in the water-sprayer to get rid of the bugs that attract the moles in the first place. I still have a bunch of mole hills/tunnels in the front yard, where there's shade and weeds. I've not really had any mole tunnels in the super sunny areas. So my questions are: 1. should I use chemicals for the weeds, and if so, what and when? 2. When should I scalp the grass this spring? And how short should I scalp it? 3. Should I keep using alfalfa, and when, and what else would help as far as fertilizer? 4. Any other thoughts?

2kk, I assume you have St Augustine. Getting a disease in brand new St Aug sod is very common. It is very sensitive to being covered up, so sitting on the sod truck pallet is the problem. It needs to be put down ASAP when it is delivered. That was sales pitch from the Scott's guy. Your lawn is always recoverable. Michael's 2-week pictures are interesting, but it really does take 3 full weeks (21 days) to see the improvement. I don't see any disease in his most recent photo posts, but there are some yellow blades laying down and slightly out of focus. That's not good. What you are calling thatch is just the dead blades of grass. Chinch bugs are trivial to find. Go out to the hottest part of a sidewalk and wipe your hand over the grass near the sidewalk. The chinch bugs will flick up in the air. If you put a piece of paper down, they will flick onto the paper and you can see them. They attack the hottest part of the soil first, so start looking there. If you don't see any, then you don't have them. Atrazine is the only weed killer for St Augustine. It comes in many different colored bottles, but anything else can damage the grass. It takes out all the other plants. If you prefer not to use lawn chemicals, then definitely stay away from atrazine. It is THE one you want to stay away from. They even advise you to work backwards spraying it so you don't walk through the sprayed grass. Corn meal will cost you less than $10 to try. It has worked for me every time I used it since 2002. If you write back, please tell us where you live.