How hard could your freeze have been? Was it worse than 19 degrees for several nights in a row? Year after year we get many nights of "hard freeze" and I've never seen a lawn that did not recover. I do see many people renovating their lawns this spring. After not watering for two full years, a lot of lawns were lost and became weed patches. Even the guy down the street who never waters ever renovated his lawn. Now he's diligently watering every day. It will be interesting to see what happens when he reverts to not watering. I suspect you have other problems. How often do you normally water? How low do you mow? How often do you fertilize? What is carpet grass? Around here St Augustine is called carpet grass. Bermuda will not be a problem unless you mow the St Aug low. If you let it get high, the bermuda will disappear. As long as St Aug gets water regularly, it will predominate. And how do you have 350 neighbors? Let's see, 350 neighbors at 1 acre each is 350 acres or 30 acres more than half a section. I suppose that is possible.

Hi Sandhills, I went with Palisades Zoysia, and LOVE it. A little about my method first, for anyone curious. I used the "broadcast sprigging" method I described in an earlier post. This method allows a pallet of 450 sf of sod to plant 4500 sf. Unfortunately, sod does quite a number on chipper/shredder blades, so I only made it a bit over 1/2 way through the job before the blades were useless. I ripped up quite a bit by hand, before finally giving up and plugging the last 20%. I would recommend the broadcast sprigging method ONLY to anyone who can get sprigs from the farm though, or has a better way to produce sprigs from sod. It turned out to be one of the hardest projects of my life. If I could get sprigs, I'd do my front yard that way -- Since I can't, I'm going to lay sod this spring. Regarding the Palisades Zoysia itself - it is AWESOME. Everything I had read and been advised about it is true. It is medium-wide blade, darker green (compared to other zoysia), and blends in well with the neighbor's fescue. It can be mowed with a regular mower (many require reel mowing) -- I use the second lowest setting on my troy bilt self propelled mower. And oh what a pleasure it is to mow! I put the link to the sod supplier (Carolina Green Sod) in a previous post, but will include here (below) again. I dealt with their salesman, Andy, who could not have been more helpful. I plan to put up a video of my project on Youtube as soon as I can figure out how to get my video to render properly :) If you want to see the grass first hand, the farm where they grow Palisades is in Cheraw, SC. They also supply to a new community (Brier Chapel) in Chapel Hill, if you're ever up that way. Actually, if you call Andy, he may let you know of somewhere in your area (that's how I found out about Brier Chapel). By the way, if anyone near the Chapel Hill/Durham/Burlington area is interested, let me know. I will be ordering a delivery in late May or early June and would love to combine shipping. Here is a link that might be useful: Carolina Green Sod

I was under-watering for the longest time so I bumped it up and started watering twice a week 1 1/2 - 2" Thats entirely too much water. At the very most you should apply 1" of water. Any more than that, is being wasted and is not benefiting the plant. When the lawn needs water, you'll see spots in the lawn that turn bluish-gray, footprints that remain in the grass long after being made, and many leaf blades folded in half lengthwise. Apply only enough water to wet the soil in the rootzone. For Florida's sandy soils, 3/4 inch of water is generally sufficient. Do not water the lawn again until signs of wilt occur again. This technique works regardless of turfgrass species, soil type, season, or other environmental conditions.

Buffalo requires full sun like bermuda to perform best so stratch that out.. Zoysia prefers a lot of sun, nowwhere as good shade tolerant as st augustine. If anything, I'd suggest coarse bladed type over fine type. Easier to mow with rotary mower at 3 inches. Empire and Palisades are my two recommendation. Actually, now that it occurred to me, Palisades has somewhat good shade tolerance and looks like mini-st augustine grass. keep in mind, they are like bermuda, They will take over plant beds, etc if left unchecked but not as aggressive. They spread underground so it makes it a bit tough to control and get rid of where it's not wanted. It should be fine somewhere that gets 6 hours of sunlight. Don't be fooled that they are drought tolerant. They still do need same amount of watering as st augustine to look good. The only difference is that st augustine will die if it doesn't get water over a long period of time while zoysia simply goes dormant and will come back once they receive water. Believe it or not "Floratam' st augustine outperforms all zoysia varieties when it comes to drought tolerant... Unfortunately, it has wimpy cold tolerance. Only for zone 9, MAYBE zone 8b. I think I have it up here but the sod place told me its not. Maybe it mutated from palmetto? Who knows... it seems to do fine up here. More aggressive for sure.