Is this clover in my St. Augustine??
I've been trying to promote my St. Augustine to grow and spread over my lawn. This clover like stuff is growing amongst my grass is the shaded areas of my lawn. I've read differing opinions on letting clover (if that's what this is) grow in your yard. Some say leave it cause it adds nitrogen and some say it will hinder the growth of my St. Augustine. I'm worried that it may be promoting the gray leaf spot I have by holding moisture around my grass.
If I need to eradicate it what's the best way? I use organic material to feed my soil and wouldn't want to harm my Microherd but not opposed to chemicals that won't have and effect on them.
Comments (9)
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Can my St. Augustine come back?
Comments (9)I found this place just 30 minutes from me: TurfGrass America. The lady there said that this would work best for our area: http://www.turfgrassamerica.com/iProduct.aspx?ProdID=126 St. Augustine Del Mar , description at the bottom of this note. It says vigorous, I'll have to find out what that means exactly. $170 for a pallet...which if it can do every 5 feet would be enough I think. I'm on a 2 year schedule so I know it'll eventually get there. Yes, it is a big lawn and I am worried about the water. I'm considering either rainwater collection and/or reverse osmosis from a nearby creek! St. Augustine DelMar® Stenotaphrum secundatum DelMar® St. Sugustine DelMar® St. Augustine is a vigorous, dark emerald green, medium-coarse textured lawn grass. It is one of the most cold tolerant varieties of St. Augustine making it a great choice in colder climates such as Dallas/Ft. Worth, and has very good shade tolerance. It also grows well in full sun. DelMar® turns golden brown in its dormancy. DelMar® tests at the top of National testing in overall quality among St. Augustines. DelMar® is the highest ranking cold tolerant, St. Augustine Decline Disease Free St. Augustine grass available. DelMar® St. Augustine is a vigorous, dark emerald green, medium-coarse textured lawn grass. It is one of the most cold tolerant varieties of St. Augustine making it a great choice in colder climates such as Dallas/Ft. Worth, and has very good shade tolerance. It also grows well in full sun. DelMar® turns golden brown in its dormancy. DelMar® tests at the top of National testing in overall quality among St. Augustines. DelMar® is the highest ranking cold tolerant, St. Augustine Decline Disease Free St. Augustine grass available. Area: 1, 2, 3, & 4 Intended Use: Residential & Commercial Availability: Sod Mowing Height: 3" Optimum...See MoreAdvice for improving my neglected St. Augustine lawn?
Comments (7)Good point about the shade. Can you post a mid day picture taken from, say, across the street, showing how much shade you get? Generally St Augustine will spread about 2 inches per week when the temps are in the 70s if everything is going well. You applied a chemical fertilizer waaaaaay too early even for the Woodlands. I just read Randy Lemmon's website recommendations. At first it sounded fine, but he gets into preventive treatments for disease, which I STRONGLY disagree with. Your soil requires a healthy population of beneficial fungi to be healthy. Treating it for no reason kills off the beneficial fungi and destroys the soil biology. Then looking at the rest of his suggestions it appears he's selling fertilizers just like Trugreen is. He's just not applying it for you. And he's selling far too much. Growing great St Augustine is really easy. Water deeply (1 inch all at one time) but infrequently, mulch mow at the mower's highest setting every 1-2-3 weeks (depending on how fast it's growing, fertilize once in early May (for the Woodlands) and again on Labor Day and Thanksgiving. You do not need to core aerate. As you pointed out it's hard work. You can do a much better job by spraying the lawn with shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet followed by deep watering. Then 3 weeks later you can reapply if you think the soil has not become soft enough. I sprayed mine in 2012 and after a rain like today it's almost too soft to walk on without turning your ankle. If you want to get rid of weeds, wait until April and spot spray the weeds with an atrazine product. Be careful to read the directions 2 times. You should only spray atrazine once a year so make it count. It will kill just about everything except the St Augustine in 3 weeks. The odd thing about spraying it is you have to walk backwards so you don't walk through the stuff you sprayed. Atrazine is not a friendly chemical, hence these warnings. After a decade or so of doing these lawn care forums I'm willing to go out on a limb and proclaim that most people do not water properly. I mentioned deep and infrequent. Deep is 1 inch all at once. Infrequent depends on the temperature. With temps in the 90s you only need to water once a week. Yes, even in the Woodlands. And yes, even in Phoenix. With temps in the 80s deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70 you can water once a month. This is probably the most important part of lawn care. Once you get the water controlled, then the mowing and chemicals (or organics) will work better for you. I have become full organic and have seen some benefits. If you want to continue with full chemical fertilizers, I would suggest at least once a year you apply an organic fertilizer like corn meal or alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow). These materials feed the microbes living in the soil and make everything work better. These are quite often all it takes to make poor soil healthy again....See MoreCan anyone identify this grass growing in my St Augustine lawn
Comments (10)My house was on the back of a 1-acre lot on the edge of town. The only tall grass was back by the house, so you had to stop and look kinda hard to see that the grass was that tall. If you were going to be offended, you had to stop and make a big deal out of it. When it's all the same height, it still looks manicured, especially at a distance. Well it turns out there was an ordinance against eyesore lots. The ordinance had words to the effect that you could not have piles of junk with weeds, grass, or plants growing 18 inches high. We all know what this ordinance is there for - so people will not toss their junk on the street and let grass and weeds grow up through it. I did not have piles of junk. I could walk down my street and find at least 5 other houses with piles of trash and weeds growing up through them for 6 months or more. The problem with my house is that it used to belong to a prominent lady in local politics and the church. She was one of those "GET OFF MY LAWN" people who took exceptional pride in the appearance of the yard. She passed away and it went to hell. A guy bought the house to rent the rooms and I bought from him. He let half the lawn die completely. All this happened so fast that the neighbors and friends of the original lady seriously resented my "letting the lawn go." So I was selected for one-time enforcement of the ordinance. I showed up at a city hall meeting and convinced them they needed to print a lot more signs and enforce the rules everywhere in town. They did that and quickly overwhelmed the enforcement employees. I also took issue with the word, plants, in the ordinance. Strict wording of the ordinance would prohibit any plants taller than 18 inches. Everyone has plants taller than that. I started mowing the lawn down to 17 inches to test my skills at passive aggression. A year later they rewrote the ordinance taking the plant/grass/weed height down to 12 inches. So I mowed at 11 inches. Mowing that high takes a string trimmer and actually goes pretty fast - much faster than mowing with a mower. So it was nice for awhile and then not so much fun, but I did learn a lot about lawn care....See MoreWeeds overrunning my St. Augustine grass.
Comments (23)5 INCHES? Yikety yikes! I used to be in the finish grading biz with my brother in law. He was the tractor driving pro with me doing the detail work up against the buildings. Look at your last picture - see the area where the shovel is? There is about 2 inches TOO MUCH soil right there sloping up to 4 inches too much soil over by the concrete slab. The part of the house which sticks outward away from the slab at the base is called the sill. There is supposed to be 4 inches visible below the sill of the house to ensure you don't get rot and a termite invasion. The sill is made of wood, so when it is buried under soil or mulch or what have you, you are asking for moisture and related problems. Just for grins, lets say you have 4 inches too much soil over an area of 60 feet by 30 feet. That amounts to 22 cubic yards too much soil. We're talking about a big 18-wheeler load of TOO MUCH soil which should be hauled away. I'm going to recommend you get some professional landscapers to come take a look at your situation. You might look for a professional grader also. The grader is not in the landscaping business and might have a different perspective on the situation. In any case, whoever looks at this, the preferred equipment for grading or regrading is a tractor with a box blade on it. Landscapers call it a landscaper's blade. Here's a picture. They make blades for skid steers and Bobcats, but those machines have too small a wheelbase and too high a center of gravity to do the work quickly. A tractor driver can do 5 acres in a morning while a Bobcat driver might take weeks to do 5 acres....See MoreDebo214
8 years agoDebo214
8 years ago
dchall_san_antonio
8 years agoDebo214
8 years agolast modified: 8 years ago"Mother Nature can be a problem. If you're watering only when it shows signs of stress, about how long is that interval (without the rains)? In San Antonio I have not yet started to irrigate. I'm about to do some watering in Bandera (slightly dryer and much less shade).
Can you please post a picture showing the overall lawn?"
I watered yesterday and before that it has been several weeks (except for spot watering on new plugs)
The shaded area and the area in front of the main part of the house is where the St. Augustine is growing.
Debo214
8 years ago
This shows better contrast. You can see the crabgrass garden Ive got going on. :-/
dchall_san_antonio
8 years agoWhat I would do is to
- fertilize only the St Augustine.
- Mow at the highest setting and allow the St Aug to go 2 weeks.
- Water deep and infrequent like we talk about and "favor" the St Aug. Your grass in the shade will need water less often than the grass out in the full sun. Don't water when the crabgrass looks dry. Water when the St Aug out in the sun looks dry. The shady grass will appreciate it, and it still won't encourage weeds. Crabgrass is a summer annual plant that thrives in the heat and full sun.
With your lot size it's going to take a year or so for the St Augustine to completely grow out and take over. If you wanted to speed up that process, put a couple pieces of St Aug sod around amongst the weeds and do the 1,2,3 above. As the runners spread out, you have to fertilize along the runners, too. I use organics to fertilize so I'm not at all worried about over applying fertilizer. If you have access to the Floratam variety of St Augustine, use that out in the sun.- If you want to use a spray weed killer, you cannot use normal Weed-B-Gone with 2,4-d in it. You have to use atrazine. Everything else seems to kill St Augustine. Here's one you can get at Walmart.
Read the directions carefully. This stuff is not to be trifled with. You have to walk backwards as you spray so you don't walk through the wet grass. That makes planning your route slightly more important. Don't paint yourself into a corner where you can't get out. And you can only spray it twice in a year, so choose your timing wisely. Remember you are only wetting the weeds, not drenching the soil with it. It can take 2 weeks before you see the first signs of the weeds dieing, but "suddenly" they'll all be dieing. All you need to spray is around the St Augustine runners. I would leave the rest of the weeds to grow until the St Augustine spreads to fill it all in. When you spray around the runners, that kills the weeds around the runners giving them more light and soil to expand into. And you don't need to spray in the middle of the dense St Augustine except where you have the clovery stuff growing. Once it gets pretty dense it fights off the weeds by itself. Also rather than connecting a bottle like that directly to a hose I connect through another nozzle with a valve so I can turn the flow on and off. Those are cheap at Home Depot or Lowe's. Here's a link to a picture.Debo214
8 years agoMy reply:
What I would do is to
- fertilize only the St Augustine.- I HAVE NOT BEEN DOUNG THIS SO I WILL START! I HAVE BEEN FEEDING THE EMTIRE FRONT YARD.
- Mow at the highest setting and allow the St Aug to go 2 weeks.- I AM CURRENTLY DOING THIS. MY QUESTION IS; IS IT OK TO MOW THE REST OF THE YARD TO KEEP IT TIDY?
- Water deep and infrequent like we talk about and "favor" the St Aug. Your grass in the shade will need water less often than the grass out in the full sun. Don't water when the crabgrass looks dry. Water when the St Aug out in the sun looks dry. - THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN DOING :)
"With your lot size it's going to take a year or so for the St Augustine to completely grow out and take over. If you wanted to speed up that process, put a couple pieces of St Aug sod around amongst the weeds and do the 1,2,3 above. As the runners spread out, you have to fertilize along the runners, too. I use organics to fertilize so I'm not at all worried about over applying fertilizer. If you have access to the Floratam variety of St Augustine, use that out in the sun." - I ALSO USE ORGANIC FERTILIZER (THANKS TO YOU;) I HAVE PUT OUT MANY FLORATAM PLUGS IN THE SUNNY AREA (INTO PLACES WHERE I HAVE DUG UP CRABGRASS)
- "If you want to use a spray weed killer, you cannot use normal Weed-B-Gone with 2,4-d in it. You have to use atrazine. Everything else seems to kill St Augustine. Here's one you can get at Walmart"
- All you need to spray is around the St Augustine runners. I would leave the rest of the weeds to grow until the St Augustine spreads to fill it all in. When you spray around the runners, that kills the weeds around the runners giving them more light and soil to expand into." - OK THIS IS BRILLANT!!! I WILL START DOING THIS ASAP!!!
dchall_san_antonio