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inserenomen

Weed Troubles While Growing Zenith Zoysia from Seeds

inserenomen
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago

Ever since I moved into this house in Round Rock, TX (next to Austin) about a month and a half ago, I have been working on trying to get grass in the back yard. When I moved in, it was all weeds, mostly clover, with the tiniest bit of random grass or grass-like weeds mixed in. I've been estimating that it's about 3000 square feet, but I don't expect that to be fully accurate.

I've planted two 6 lb bags of Zenith Zoysia seeds, the first on 7/23/15, the other on 8/2/15 after thinking I'd ruined the first batch by accidentally leaving the sprinkler on overnight. Before I put down the second bag of seeds, I was excited to see the first bag's seeds growing after just 9 days (the bag said it should take 14-18). I figured then that the second bag would simply fill things in more.

However, now that that "grass" has had time to grow up, looking at it today, I've started realizing that it doesn't actually look much like grass when it's larger. In fact, I think I've just got giant patches of weeds growing now (including the obvious clover).

Funny enough, I'd noticed a bit of different-looking grass before, but figured it was from leftover seeds in the dirt from the bits of grass that was there before. Now I realize there are two distinct other types of grass growing, one of which looks like it might be the actual Zenith Zoysia finally starting to sprout, right on time after 15 days from the first plant.

My questions are:

A.) Can someone confirm my suspicions that the thick patches are weeds?

B.) Can someone confirm that these large tufts are some other type of grass, not Zoysia?

C.) Can someone confirm that those tiny little grass blades (the stuff that's not obviously clover) are at least probably the Zenith Zoysia coming in?

D.) Can I spray something to kill all of these weeds without harming my actual new grass that's just barely started sprouting?

E.) Do I need to go through the trouble of at least thinning out the big patches by hand to make sure that the actual grass is getting sun?

F.) I never actually leveled the soil with a roller. Is it not too late to do that or would I just crush the tiny new grass? Could I wait until it's established a month or two from now and roll it? I'm definitely seeing a lot of puddles when I water where various dips form in the soil.

Here's the full history of what I've done so far:

  1. Killed everything with RoundUp
  2. Waited about a week
  3. Abandoned my original plan of installing a proper in-ground sprinkler system after discovering that I have tough clay and rocks just a few inches down throughout the yard
  4. Tilled the soil with a big rear-tine tiller rented from Home Depot
  5. Raked and bagged all of the dead weeds
  6. Spread a couple bags of fertilizer
  7. Spread 6 lbs of Zenith Zoysia seeds from Seedland.com with a hand spreader
  8. Raked the seeds in
  9. Started watering a couple times a day with a basic hose sprinkler (Melnor Deluxe Turbo Oscillating Sprinkler), often hand watering the edges rather than try moving the sprinkler around
  10. Bought 20 bags of Scott's turf builder soil (which has some starter fertilizer mixed in) and raked it all over the lawn to create a thin layer after deciding I really should have helped the soil more
  11. Almost a week after seeding, I accidentally left the sprinkler on overnight, at which point I started wondering if I'd ruined it all by allowing the seeds to sink down too deep into the soil (Zenith Zoysia is supposed to be covered by a maximum of 1/4 inch of soil)
  12. Ordered another 6 lbs of seeds
  13. Crafted a makeshift in-ground sprinkler system using a timer with a 4-zone splitter, heavy duty hoses buried an inch or two under the ground, and 4 Melnor Pulsator Sprinklers (on on each side of the yard) set up to cover everything pretty well except a couple corners I'm not going to bother with, divided between 2 zones
  14. Set the sprinklers to run for 15 minutes per zone every 4 hours as I'd read in various places that you optimally want to keep the seeds moist at all times (though the seed bag only recommends twice a day) and it's really hot out (90s+)
  15. Got all excited while setting up the sprinklers, because it
    looked like the first set of seeds had already started sprouting despite
    the fact that it had only been about 9 days since they'd been planted
    (the bag states that it should take 14-18 days for germination)
  16. Spread the second 6 lbs of Zenith Zoysia seeds with a hand spreader
  17. Spread Scott's Starter Fertilizer (24-24-4) with a hand spreader (which broke while doing that)
  18. A few days later, spread granules of fire ant killer when I got sick of an increasing number of fire ants stealing my seeds and piling them up around their nests. Seemed to do the job as I've only seen a few stray ants since.
  19. Over the last week, the grass kept on growing, getting thicker and thicker. However, over the last few days, I've started noticing other types of grass growing and finally, today after staring at the large patch of "grass" that was growing so well, I started to think about how it didn't really look like grass anymore

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