My neighbor has that stuff growing on his side of my driveway. I thought it was a weird nutgrass but after looking at the pictures on Wikipedia, it is definitely kyllinga. That area has been dug up several times since we lived there, so who knows where that soil came from. I used to maintain that as St Augustine and the weeds were not evident. I might have to try that again. I don't have problems with nutgrass like others in the area. I believe my success is due to infrequent watering. Nutgrass, also a sedge, likes to live in wetlands. You might not have as much control over the moisture in Houston, but I can go for weeks without watering because I water so deeply. The other stuff looks serious as a weed that will choke out St Aug as fast as it can spread. Have you tried spraying it with strong vinegar on a hot, sunny day? I would start with that. Call around to garden stores and ask about 20% vinegar. The danger of using such strong vinegar is inhaling it or splashing it into your eyes. Inhaling it is not that much of a problem because it smells so very strong. Splashing it in your eyes will cause blindness for at least a few months. If that fails to kill the weed, get ready to lie around in the grass pulling it out. You'll probably have to get the roots. If you use vinegar, any overspray will kill the St Aug, too, but if you kill all the weed, you can let the grass grow in at your leisure.

Re compost: In our nearby medium sized town our water treatment plant sells very inexpensively compost which is soft and brown and spreads like a dream. It has a very high rating (I confess, I don't know by whom...the state?) We have no industry so I am not concerned about things like heavy metals. It's a college town w. small business etc. Anybody think that using this is a bad idea? I have been putting it on my garden...about an inch in the spring and again in the fall...and around shrubs...and I cannot tell you what a HUGE change there is in my garden. My plan is to spread it on the lawn...it will be very easy to work with...I am following a link from a posting on the regular lawn site (sorry, I have it printed out so can't put it in here) but at any rate, you toss it on by the shovel-full and then use a push broom to spread it about 1/3 of an inch and get if off the grass blades and then water it in well. Anybody done this w. their town compost? Also...and please don't take offense whoever is involved...I'd like to repsectfully suggest that when we are talking about things that are really dumb we don't use "retarded". It's so easy for us all to do...we grew up with this language. But it hurts feelings of people with retardation, their family members and friends. It's the "language shapes thought" thing and I am not saying this to be critical, because it was something I had to learn too. But I am trying to gently steer kids away from this and so, gulp, try and bring it out as something to think about whenever it comes up. Hope this is taken in the spirit of sharing in which it is meant. anyhow...I know this isn't compost! ... but it is about life! I am very grateful for this Forum as I did not use chemicals but I do have a lawn which is a bit of a mess and I want to change that!

The milorganite areas may be better due to microbe action, or an iron difficency as you mentioned. If milorganite is working for you, than use it again on the whole lawn in late July. If you have the stomach, try to mow it down to 2.5 to 3" over a couple of cutting and returning to 4" when done. If it is just dead grass that isn't decomposed, cutting it shorter with sharp blades will help it decompose. If your worried about fungus, a 20 lb/1000 ft^2 application of corn meal with a 3-6 oz milk/1000 ft^2 watering in would help. You can also use cracked corn but corn meal will work quicker as it is finer and has a larger surface area to volume for the microbes to work on. How are you watering?

I was sort of hoping you'd be living in Blythe or somewhere where you needed extra water, but no. You will almost never need to water more than once every 2 weeks. On the days when the Santa Ana winds blow, if that lasts longer than 2 days, you might want to water once before your 2 weeks are up. But you do need to water a full inch when you water. If runoff is an issue for you, we have a cure for that, but I'll wait for you to ask. Or if your soil is unduly hard - same solution. Ask your lawn mower guy to raise the deck all the way to the top for you. Still mow every other week. If he refuses, remind him there are other lawn care professionals who will do it. St Augustine really performs a lot (LOT) better when mowed high. It does not grow any faster when mowed high. In fact there are no minuses to mowing taller. You don't have to go to my mowing extreme, but here's a picture of my chow chow walking through the tall St Augustine at my old house...All you can see is the top of her tail and ears, thus demonstrating that St Augustine does just fine all the way up to 32 inches high. That grass had no fertilizer in years. One part in the shade (but still with droughts and 100+ summer temps) needed no irrigation at all for 36 months. If you mow your grass at 3.5 to 4 inches you'll get much better rooting and the ability to withstand prolonged dry spells. That does look like the same fungal disease I get. I get it because sometimes I don't get the tree leaves off the grass before the dew hits it. In your area you have dew 365 days a year, so you absolutely cannot leave anything on the grass. My wife used to leave garden trash on the grass until I 'splained it to her that just leaving it there overnight started the disease process. I'm not sure which disease it is but for me (being organic) the solution is always the same product - corn meal. Corn meal starts a biological chain reaction that eventually (a week or two) kills the disease. Then in 3 weeks you should see the grass returning, by stolons, back to the bare spot. You can try using a chemical fungicide if you prefer. I can't recommend one, because I never use them. The corn meal rate is 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Do the entire lawn because you don't know where it starts or stops. And if you only do the bad spots, you'll have deep green grass in those spots because corn meal is an organic fertilizer. Pick one or the other to try. If you try the chemical and you're not happy with it, you can't use corn meal later, because that biological chain reaction requires healthy soil microbes and the fungicide kills the required beneficial fungi.