St. Augustine sod job going bad again - Photos
Mike Oliver
8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago
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Mike Oliver
8 years agoRelated Discussions
New St Augustine Sod questions
Comments (9)Willy for some reason your other post has the comments turned off. You might want to repost. I have let St Augustine grow up to 32 inches high, which seems to be the limit of growth. Then I "mowed" it back down with a string trimmer and kept it at 12 inches tall with a string trimmer. So there is nothing going to happen if the grass gets too tall. The taller it is the deeper the roots go. The deeper the roots go the less irrigation you need to apply. My tall grass St Aug went for 36 months with no irrigation, and it looked fine(ish) through all the droughts we had. As soon as the rains came again the grass, of course, perked up. The point is the taller it is the better it will make it through the summer. I just trimmed my current lawn down to get the few pieces of weed stems out, but I tried not to cut the actual grass. This is on a south facing slope in the heat of Texas, so I'm trying to keep it alive with once a week watering allowed around here. It looks very good considering the situation. I attribute that to the length. So you can mow if you want to. If you decide not to mow right now, then when you finally do mow, bring it down by about 1/3 with a string trimmer for your first cut. Give it a couple days to rest and regrow, then bring it down to the final height or by another 1/3 if the grass got pretty tall. Then mow at the mower's highest setting all the time. There is never any reason to mow St Aug at any other setting....See Morefirst time sodder - sodding with Palmetto St. Augustine
Comments (8)Well, you have been getting advice that conflicts with what we have learned here over the years. You say you want to do everything right. Here are the lessons learned from years of reading Internet gardening forums. 1. NEVER rototill in preparation for laying seed or sod. 2. You can sod any day of the year. 3. Palmetto is a relatively poor variety. Floratam is the one you really want. So that bad news is that you wasted time and money preparing the soil. The good news is you can still have the best looking lawn in the neighborhood starting from where you are. Before the sod arrives, go out and water the soil completely. Water for at least an hour. This will settle the soil that is currently fluffy. After the soil settles some, level it again using a rake or filling in with sand/soil. Try not to raise the surface of the soil by blanket top dressing. All you want to do is fill the holes. Then water it again to settle the new surface. You can get the most level surface by dragging a piece of weighted chain link fence over the soil. That tool will loosen the high spots and drag high soil into the low spots that you cannot see. Then after your sod goes down, rent a water fillable roller to push the sod down to the surface of the soil. Roots from the sod will not grow through the air to reach the soil. The sod has to be touching everywhere. Since you cannot afford a sprinkler, go to Home Depot and get a Vigoro water hose timer. Then get as many oscillating sprinklers as you need to cover your lawn all at the same time. Then go to Sears and get Craftsman brand hoses to connect to the timer and the sprinklers (Sears' hoses do not leak at the fittings if you tighten them properly). You might need splitters to feed all the hoses out of the timer. I like the big green and black ones from Lowe's. Set your timer to go off every day, morning, noon, and night, for 10 minutes each time. You need to do this so the sod will knit to the underlying soil. If you do this for three weeks, the roots will be in and you're off to the races. After the roots are in you can back off on the watering. Ultimately you want to back off to watering once every week in the summer heat and once or twice a month the rest of the year. Use your timer to do this. I was going to lose my lawn this year until I got the timer rigged up. Mulch mow St Augustine at the mower's highest setting. Weld the adjusters in place so that your well meaning brother in law doesn't come by some day to do you a favor and he scalps your nice lawn. St Aug never needs to be scalped. Just mowing at the highest setting will give you the best looking lawn in the neighborhood. I fertilize with organic fertilizer 5 times per year on the federal holidays. I start on Washington's Birthday and end on Thanksgiving. If you use synthetic you can follow the same schedule except skip 4th of July...and also don't do the first one until after you have mowed real grass for the second time in the spring. If you don't want to spend the money on new hoses, cut the male ends of your current hoses off and replace them with the black plastic repair ends from Lowe's. The stamped brass fittings are the worst. The Sears brass fittings are slightly better. I really prefer the black plastic male fittings for all my hoses. They seal tight every time....See MoreSt. Augustine sod, help....
Comments (12)Pictures are a big help! Thanks Firstly: yes, that is St Augustine. The next to last picture does show fungal lesions. The easiest treatment for that, especially with our warm weather, is ordinary corn meal. I realize that seems hard to believe, but it is a microbiological solution. Corn meal attracts various fungi to decompose it. After the population of those fungi grows from eating the corn meal, then another fungus comes in as a predator on the first fungi. Once the population of the secondary fungus grows large enough, it will spread and "eat" the fungus causing your disease and kill it. I have gotten that same disease almost every year since 2001. It will continually spread if you don't stop it. Corn meal was the one thing that worked for me. Apply at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet now and repeat in 3 weeks. Get the corn meal at your local feed store. Call first because there is another product they are familiar with called corn GLUTEN meal. You don't want that. You want ordinary whole ground corn meal. Cracked corn will work, too. Deer corn will work but it will give you a field of corn. Being in Brownsville, you can get a 25-pound bag of corn flour at HEB. Don't get the stuff that is tortilla mix. That has baking powder in it. You just want plain ground corn. There are almost no insects that hurt St Augustine. Fire ants might smother part or eat the roots, but generally they are just a nuisance...as you well know. The red ants are not a problem. Any tiny hopping insects you see are not a problem. By the way, corn meal is a low grade organic fertilizer. You will see the lawn green up about 3 weeks after you apply it. With the second application of corn meal, you may not need to fertilize again until next April (after the spring flush of rapid growth is over). If you stick with Milorganite, you can apply that any time and not have a problem. Keep checking to see that the sod is knitting down into the underlying soil....See MoreNew Floratam St Augustine Sod Dying - Fungus?
Comments (12)Looks like it to me. Here is a link to some more information, which you might have already found. I would assume the grass came with the disease which got much worse with the rain. Take a note and don't buy grass from that supplier again. Being an organic kind of guy, I would be hitting the grass with ordinary corn meal at 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet every 3-4 weeks for the rest of the summer. This is INSTEAD of using a fungicide. As discussed in the link above, this is a soil borne disease. These problems are caused by an imbalance of beneficial versus pathogenic microbes - essentially an unhealthy soil. The fastest way to restore the soil to health is to use organic fertilizer, NOT fungicide. Corn meal has the additional benefit of heavily populating the soil with a predatory, but beneficial fungus called Trichoderma (try koh DER mah). Not all fungi cause disease. If you cannot find ordinary corn meal at your local feed stores (call first), then cracked corn will work. If you cannot find either one, then look for a grocery store catering to the Hispanic market. They will have 25-pound bags of corn flour. They will also have 25-pound bags of tortilla ready-mix which has baking soda and baking powder in it. The bags are almost identical, but you want the plain corn flour. Ask for help if you cannot tell them apart. If you have any doubts about the effectiveness of organic fertilizer, please ask. I think you ran into an unfortunate weather situation - unlucky timing. The grass could have been afflicted before you bought it, but that's hard to prove. It may have a guarantee or you might get a discount on buying again from the same supplier....See MoreMike Oliver
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoMike Oliver
8 years agolast modified: 8 years agoreeljake
8 years agodchall_san_antonio
8 years ago
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