St Augustine Grass - damage - help

15 years ago

Hello,

I have a 2 year old St Augustine grass lawn. Through most of the summer it looked pretty good. However, over the last few weeks - areas are turning yellow (they are very random with no pattern) and some are have even died out. I have fertilized twice this year with milogranite and have applied corn meal as a fungicide. I have not been watering this year - but we have had plenty of rain, so I donÂt believe I need to. I have looked for gray spot and brown patch - but it doesn't appear to be that (I had that last year). I did the soap water test for cinch bugs and didnÂt see any (just hundreds of worms). I am looking for help trying to figure out what is causing the lawn to die, so I can figure out how to treat it. I was wondering if I should treat with more cornmeal - just in case it is a fungus - can I put on too much cornmeal. I appreciate any assistance you can provide.

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Comments (8)

brizzyintx
15 years ago
Your problem sounds similar to what I have in a small area. I, too, think it's fungal. I put down cornmeal over the whole lawn this weekend, and spread a light layer of compost over the affected areas. I'm keeping my fingers crossed...
nandina
15 years ago
Do you live in the area of SC. where mole crickets have taken up residence? Do another soap water test increasing the amount of soap by a bit. Pour it heavily from the center to the outside of one of the bad spots and after the angry worms have boiled out of the ground, turn your hose on gently, spray and water the soap suds watching carefully for mole crickets. They can be slow to emerge and disappear back underground quickly especially at this time of year when they are small. Hopefully mole crickets are not the problem.

Don't be afraid to use cornmeal as needed on and around brown patch areas of the lawn. Good idea to do a repeat treatment two weeks later. Remember to moisten it with water after spreading.
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I highly doubt its SADD if others in the area have the same looking disease. My guess would be brown patch. The area of brown patch that I had in the winter is greening up, but not fully recovered. The area has hardly any upward growth, it appears to be stunted, which is a usual characteristic after the BP occurrence. In order for these areas to fully recover and start upward growth, is to put some quality compost on the effected areas and keep it moist for a week or so. (bagged compost will also work). From past experience, compost is the only solution I have found for the grass to fully recover from Brown Patch disease. The experiment I conducted was to determine if I had Root Knot Nematode. I placed Corn meal on the area at the recommended rate and sugar on half of the effected area. Initially, the sugar half recovered faster, but currently the half with Corn meal only is doing better. It takes time to recover, try not to expect instant results. About sod webworms: The larvae are greenish with many black spots. Adults are dingy brown moths with a wingspread of about 3/4 inch. You will see alot of moths fly away (somewhat eradically) when you walk or mow over the area. The adults (moths) are laying eggs, and the larvae feed on the grass blades and cause noticeable injury within 2 weeks (early webworm damage resembles drought stress, even when there is sufficient moisture). They complete their life cycle in 5 to 6 weeks and have several generations each year. The soap flush technique is a good way to detect sod webworms. dchall is 100% correct. Last year he told me the same thing he told you about the paper wasp. In the past I would kill them because my wife was worried about them stinging the kids. In turn, I would get sod webworm damage every year. Last year I stopped killing them and I must say they proved to be a huge help to me. I only had a few very very small areas that were damaged by the webworms. I would always see the paper wasps hovering just above the grass blades hunting for there next meal. I also used the BT a few times last year. Timing is very crucial for the product to work. Apply BT 1 week after you first notice the adult webworm moths fly around, then reapply every 3-4 days if in full sun and every 5-7 days in shady areas until the moths are gone. If it rains or you run your irrigation you must reapply. Hope this helps Can you post a few pictures? It would help out a lot.
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The grass is dry. That can happen from not enough moisture or from rotten roots not letting the water up. Are you getting puddles of water in the dry areas? Puddles can allow fungal rot to set in. If no puddles then the areas are not getting enough water. That could be due to sprinklers not adjusted right, runoff from hydrophobic soils, sandy soils allowing moisture to run through, or simply the idea that you need more than 1 inch per week this time of year. My guess is your sprinklers are not adjusted right. That's more of an educated guess because I can see what appears to be a circular shape on the grass in your big picture. Mid way up from center to the right side of the picture is a nice colored circle(ish) green. Outside of that is the dry area. If you put cat food cans perpendicular to the circle and turn on the sprinklers, you will probably see that the cans are not filling evenly.
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That is weird that all over the net nobody recognizes fungal disease in St Aug. The first and last pictures show it crystal clear with the lesions running up and down the brown tipped blades. I have had rousing success fighting fungal disease with ordinary corn meal applied at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Call your local feed stores to check availability. The cost should be well under $10. They might think you want corn gluten meal. You don't. The difference in price will tell you they are selling you the wrong product. CGM sells for roughly $30 per bag. When corn meal decomposes it attracts a fungus which attracts a predatory fungus causing the predator to over populate. Once the initial host fungus is gone, the predator goes after the disease fungus. Your alternative is to use chemicals. I can't help you with that. I've never needed them. But if you use chemicals first, then you cannot come back and try the corn meal later. The chemicals will kill off the predatory fungus from the soil. Try the corn meal first. If, after 3 weeks you don't like the results, either apply the corn meal again or try chemicals. Corn meal was the only thing that worked for me and was good enough to convince me to go full organic with my fertilizer. If you are happy with the corn meal after 3 weeks, you might just use it every month this summer to make sure you got it all. Corn meal is an organic fertilizer, so apply to the entire yard. Otherwise as the grass comes in over the dead areas, it would be much darker green. Watering: Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, sprinkler and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so it should work for you. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall.
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Do the brown portions pull out easily or still well rooted? That brown band looks too uniform for most common pest problems. Any chance it's stress/early dormancy from lack of water? Might get more response posting it on the GW Lawn Care Forum.
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bradley787
15 years ago
Belew,
You have described my lawn perfectly. I have been told it was grub worms. I recently purchased some beneficial nematodes and spread them around, then added a layer of very nice organic compost. I'm hoping for a better grass season in 2009.

You may want to dig about 1/2 foot in a bad area and see if you find any grubs. Also, if the grass appears to pull up easily, it's most likely grubs.
dchall_san_antonio
15 years ago
I had similar issues back when this thread was started. It apparently was a bug because it cleared up by itself. Without my doing anything the grass was back to normal by about Thanksgiving. For the OP it sounded to me like a fungus but bugs sometimes offer the same symptoms.

For bradley in Austin, there is one other thing that can cause yellowing. Excessive rain will wash the acidity out of the surface of our calcium rich soil. When that happens the iron that is already in the soil becomes unavailable to the plants until the acidity increases again. If your Austin turf is not dark green in April then something else is at work.
bradley787
15 years ago
dchall,

If you could post a picture of this 'rain' your talking about, that may be helpful to me. Being in San Antonio, you should know it never rains in Austin. My grass was beautiful April through about August, then it started yellowing and coming up easily.

I had a tree planted and the guy dug about a 1-1/2 foot whole. He pulled out over 10 grubs just from that one spot so I have to lean towards a grub issue.
dchall_san_antonio
15 years ago
Bradley,
10 grubs in a 1.5 foot hole is not enough to get excited about. You'd need 20 grubs at least. Besides that the grubs are finished eating now. Let them rest and worry about it next summer.
texasredhead
15 years ago
Very simply, St.Augustine grass requires an inch of water per week to be healthy. An occasional rain does not get the job done. I have not seen any place in Texas, perhaps with the exception of Houston, that gets excessive rain especially enough to change the pH of the soil.
dchall_san_antonio
15 years ago
texasredhead, I don't know if this will help you understand, but in any 5-year period there seems to be a week when some place (not Houston) gets between 5 and 20 inches of rain. When your soil is white limestone with a high pH, any acidity that accumulates near the surface is enough to help grass turn dark green. But when the clouds drop too much water at one time, the resulting soup restores the high pH at all levels. Then the iron binds up and the grass yellows.

If you've had different experience that might be a good topic for discussion. Somewhere between Austin and San Antonio it seems to happen every year.

St Augustine Grass - damage - help

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brizzyintx

nandina

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