Someone elses idea's if you want to use chemicals. Provided a link below. http://en.allexperts.com/q/Lawns-725/St-Augustine-lawn-2.htm My Experience I have not used any treatments (bug / 'cides) for my grass in probably 2 years now. This summer I watched ALL of my neighbors grass get brown patches and so forth. I did not have a problem for the last 2 years. I water in the mornings twice a week and fertilize (less then stated amounts) 3 times a year. If I find an area that looks like it is getting in trouble I will throw compost on it (Example cow manure compost). I have always noticed the ULTRA-GREEN lawns are the fist to die in the summers. My point is the more chemicals you add to the lawn, the more problems it seems people get. I would either dig it up and replace if it is small, or maybe try some compost and treat the soil. Healthy grass will creep in. This has been my experience. And though there is some weeds (the grass keeps it in check - most weeds in your lawn are from poor soil / severe dry conditions), it is one of the best looking lawns in the neighborhood. Adding fertlizer would be a bad choice at this time, could further the problem, go compost or replace. Here is a link that might be useful: Could help

Lyn you're talking about corn meal, not cottonseed meal. I almost never mention cottonseed meal. But if I do a search/replace in your post and sub in corn meal, then I would agree. I'm extremely supportive of using corn meal to control fungus. In fact the performance of corn meal in treating fungal disease in turf is the main reason I converted from chemicals to organics. That was in 2002. I've been using it successfully every year since. And yet Texas A&M University is publishing everything they can to squash the idea that corn meal has any effectiveness. To me that's simple misdirection of education. If they can't make it work, they need to come look at my lawn and figure out what they're doing wrong. I have some ideas about what they're doing wrong, but haven't seen their research. The silly thing is that it was TAMU who first published the idea that corn meal was an effective tool against disease (in peanuts). That was back in the 90s and they've been fighting against themselves ever since. Anyway you can't use corn meal once you've used a chemical fungicide. Corn depends on the growth of a predatory fungus for its effectiveness. If you have a fungicide down then that beneficial fungus will not thrive in sufficient populations to do anything. If it has been several weeks since you used the fungicide you could try applying a very light dusting of compost to restore the beneficial microbes and then the corn meal. >>green edge which is 100% organic slow release I just want to comment on the idea that organic fertilizer is slow release. Chemical fertilizers work on several principles but generally those are chemical imbalances forcing the fertilizer into the roots as quickly as the roots will take them in. Organic fertilizer is made from food materials like corn, wheat, soybean, cottonseed, alfalfa, etc. That food becomes food for the living microbes (bacteria, fungi, microarthropods, and others) at the surface of the soil. As the original food/fertilizer decomposes from the microbes, then subsurface microbes decompose the byproducts from the first level decomposers. The process of a succession of microbes decomposing previous decomposers is so complicated it is referred to as the soil food web. At about 3 weeks after the original application of food/fertilizer to the surface, the resulting byproduct of decomposition is actual NPK type of plant food in a form akin to what comes in a bag of chemical fertilizer. So it is not that organic fertilizer is "slow release" so much as it just takes a really long time for the biology of the soil to convert the original mammal food to plant food. But this is the way Mother Nature has designed the process. It has worked for a really long time. On the other hand, chemical fertilizers that call themselves 'slow release' are caused to be that way by coating them in a slow dissolving chemicals.

I laid 9 pallets of sod about 4 weeks ago. The grass is mostly looking great, it gets plenty of water and is rooting itself well. However 4 spots have started to brown. They're about 2 feet in diameter and all in fairly close proximity to one another. The photos don't really show the contrast well, the spots are more profound in real life. Any thoughts?

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Neil Sperry is a Texas based garden guru. He has a radio show and is syndicated in many of the big news papers in Texas. Neil Sperry is the bane of my existence. Whatever he says, I do the opposite. I followed him from about 1992 to 2002 and realized my grass looked worse every year. Then I switched to organic and learned a lot about lawn care on this and other forums. He, apparently gets all his information from sponsors selling products. I could make a living following him around to fix the mistakes he has people making. Sunlight - Neil says, St. Augustine needs 4 hours of sunlight daily just to survive, and 6 hours of hot, direct sunlight if you hope for it to grow vigorously. Again, my front lawn in SA had zero hours of sunlight per day for the duration of 25 years. It was under the canopy of several very large live oak trees. For 10 years it deteriorated, and for 15 years under organic fertilizer, it looked great. Here is a picture of my grass grown in the most dense shade in that yard. Looking straight down reveals all the flaws in the turf. What you can see is the grass was growing outward and not upright. When it is in full sun, it grows more upright driven that way by the sheer amount of grass. Here is the same yard from an angle. The house faced north and this is the front yard. There is a huge tree to the left of the walkway and two large trees in the bed to the right. This yard got no direct sunlight at all. You can see grass invading between the bricks and over the concrete. It is not doing poorly. Neil Sperry would say this is impossible. Here is a picture of my current house - back yard, south facing slope in full sun. The grass is dense. You can see the grass needed fertilizer, but besides that...in the foreground is weeds mowed at the mower's lowest setting. You can see the St Augustine runners expanding their territory into the weeds at a rate of about 15 feet per year. You can see the hose and a long handled yard tool sort of buried in the grass. The only reason you can see them is the grass is too dense for the hose and tool to sink farther down. You can tell the depth of the grass on my dog's legs. They are buried to the hock. Drought - Neil says, St. Augustine needs more water than most of our other lawngrasses (fescue excepted). If you let it get too dry, and especially if you do so repeatedly, St. Augustine will be weak, and it may even die away. This is about the worst thing you can say about St Augustine. The main reason is it is bordering on untrue. It "may" die away. St Augustine is not bermuda. Bermuda will come back from no water for a year. Here in Bandera I had a side yard where the St Aug was golden brown. It had been that way for months before I bought the house. I figured it was dead and neglected it for another year, which was a drought year. But when I watered it, the golden runners came to life. It was solid St Augustine. Had this grass been in full sun, it "may" have died away, but for whatever reasons, it came back after getting no irrigation from June to March. Here is a picture from my previous house in George West, TX. The grass is 32 inches high and had not been watered for many months. You can see the top of my dog's tail and her ears (different dog). When you mow St Augustine high, it needs less water. If you don't mow it at all, it needs no water to thrive. Please do not let the so called drought intolerance deter you from St Augustine. Fertilizer - Neil says, in part, ... Most clay soils have excessive amounts of phosphorus (middle number of the analysis), so soil tests usually suggest a high-quality, all-nitrogen fertilizer be added. What the hell? Who has clay in Texas??? Okay, now the OP describes his location as between San Antonio and Del Rio. As it turns out, there is a pocket of clay soil in D'Hanis, TX, along that route, so this might actually pertain, TO HIM, but almost noplace else. Clay soil is a red herring. Get the soil tested if you absolutely cannot grow anything. Otherwise, go with organic fertilizer and see the miracle unfold. Disease - Neil says, Gray leaf spot is a fungal disease that shows up in mid-summer into early fall. You’ll see diamond-shaped, gray-brown lesions on the midribs of the blades and occasionally on the runners themselves. This disease is most prevalent following applications of nitrogen. In fact, the additional symptoms of gray leaf spot are yellowed leaves that look like they need more nitrogen. I get gray leaf spot any time of year. My lawn woke up with it this year in early spring. Caused by too much nitrogen? I get it after months and months of no nitrogen at all. Like now, for instance. The lawns on his St Augustine Diagnostics page are all mowed way too short. Between that and his comments on drought scaring people into watering too much, it's no wonder people have problems with St Aug.