Hey Daniel. Your landscaper might have been talking about a watering plan to get the sod established. Once it is established, you can cut waaaaaaay back on watering. I have been watering once a week starting a month ago. Before that I was watering every other week. If you are watering daily, you will have to wean the roots off the water. Start by not watering tomorrow but water for twice as long the next day. Then leave it alone for two days but look carefully for signs of dryness. Water on the third day for that same "twice as long" time. The idea is to get water deeper into the soil and then let the grass roots go looking for it. They will. And the reason for not watering daily is that grass and weed seeds need daily moisture to germinate. When you deprive the weed seeds of that necessary moisture, they cannot germinate. Regarding your organic fertilizer, you cannot hurt the lawn by using double or triple the recommended rate. You might hurt it at quadruple but then it would be because you smothered the grass. I have written an Organic Lawn Care FAQ if you are interested in reading more about it. I agree with Lou that it looks to short, too. In fact I'm not sure the browning problem is not related to scalping. I would raise the mower one notch every week until you reach the highest setting. Then WELD the mower adjuster in place so some well meaning friend or relative does not borrow it and readjust it for you. There is never any reason to mow St Augustine at anything but the mower's highest setting. Tall St Aug resists weeds and chokes out most grassy weeds. It also takes less water because the soil is shaded and has less evaporation. And tall grass grows deeper roots. Okay I just thought of something else. Your brown spots might be a disease exacerbated by the rain. You can use some fertilizer anyway so I'm going to suggest that this time you use ordinary corn meal (NOT corn GLUTEN meal). Use it at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet and cover the entire lawn. You can find ordinary corn meal at a feed store and possibly at John Dromgoole's nursery. Call first to be sure they have some. If they do not, ask them who might. I'm not that far south of you and I can get it everywhere. Corn meal works biologically to kill fungal disease. You don't have to diagnose the disease first, just use the corn meal. The lawn should be looking great (at 3-4 inches high) in 3 weeks.

Hi, Margaret, I looked at the pictures, and have some thoughts for your plant. It appears to be way too dry. When wick watered plants go dry, just refilling the reservoir usually won't re-hydrate the potting soil. The wick itself needs to be 'primed'. You can do this by taking the pot off the reservoir and setting it in a bowl. Then, pour nice warm water into the bowl, and let the pot soak until the soil is wet all the way through. This may take up to an hour. Then dump out the excess water and put the pot back in the bowl. Remove those dead leaves on the outside, they are not going to magically spring back to health. After a couple of days, you should re-pot this plant. It is way too small for the size of the pot, and I can see a lot of fertilizer buildup on the sides of the pot above the soil. To determine the correct size of pot to use, measure the diameter of the plant (after you remove the dead leaves), divide by 3, and that is the number of inches in diameter for the correct pot. When wicking, watch for limp plants, and check the soil. If it is dry, and there is water in the reservoir, you know the wick has stopped working, and you will need to 'prime' it or repot if that fails to get it to work again. That is the most obvious thing I see. I don't think it has root rot or critters. Barbara

A good source for making IDs, Henry, thanks!

Patty, You're welcome. I try to remember to link it occasionally because it is so helpful. I have had a lot of PM on my tomato plants this year, and so far all I've done is remove the sick foliage. Many of the plants have put out new healthy really foliage. I really do need to spray though. I just never get around to it. As far as I am concerned, a BLT is still a BLT even if it is made with grape tomatoes! Maybe your plants that produce larger fruit will get with the program and give you some big tomatoes. I have a Tomato Disease book with great photos and it is very helpful because it covers a lot of tomato issues that are less common and, therefore, not featured on the Tomato Problem Solver website. Before I bought this book, I didn't know, for example, that there are two kinds of powdery mildew on tomatoes. I saw that and thought to myself "C'mon. Is one kind not enough? Do we really need to have two?" Cornell University has a Vegetable MD Online website for all veggies. I am going to link it for future reference. I like it too, but normally use the TAMU one for tomatoes first since it is in our geographic region. On the Vegetable MD Online website, you can click on any listed vegetable for disease information. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetable MD Online at Cornell Univ.