Issues with St. Augustine
7 years ago
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Comments (11)
- 7 years ago
- 7 years ago
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Two Issues with St. Augustine
Comments (5)Welcome to lawn care...and stop watering!! You are killing your lawn with kindness. I'll explain. Look carefully at this picture. See how the spot forms an oval right in the middle of the drainage swale? What you have is standing water right there that has contributed to a fungal disease. I'm going to make the wild assertion that all your dead grass is due to a fungal disease simply because you are watering wrong. St Augustine grass, especially in Houston and especially this time of year, only needs to be watered once every 10 days or so. You are watering more like you were establishing a new lawn. Now you need to back off. I would wean it by skipping days and increasing the time. To start with you should water about an inch every time you water. Measure how long it takes to fill a tuna can using your sprinkler system. Then water for that length of time when you water. Watch the grass for signs of wilting to get the timing for your watering. Sometimes you can go 14 days in the spring and fall. In the winter go to a monthly schedule even if the grass is dormant. When the summer heat cranks back up, you can go to every 7 days and maybe to a 5-day schedule if 7 isn't working. The big point is that you are watering shallow and often. You should be watering deep and infrequently. Frequent watering is also the reason for your weeds. Grass and weed seeds need frequent watering in order to sprout. By backing off on the watering you will cut off the supply of water at the very surface of the soil and virtually stop the new weeds. The reason your attempts to kill the weeds has not worked is you are using the wrong product. Weed n Feed comes up in the forums all the time. It just doesn't do what you expect it to do. The reason seems to do with timing of the product. Weeds die best when they are well fertilized. But by the time the fertilizer part of the WnF product kicks in, the herbicide is long gone. You will have much better results using a plain fertilizer at the recommended rate and then, spot spray individual weeds with something like Weed-B-Gone two weeks after the fertilizer. You will also save a lot of money and frustration. If you want to try that again but you're afraid of killing the grass with too much fertilizer, you can use organic fertilizer instead. The two types of fertilizer have absolutely no cross interactions that would cause you to worry. But in the case of organic, it takes 3 full weeks to see results, so wait 3 weeks instead of 2 before you use the WbG. The last thing with St Augustine is to keep it mowed at the mower's highest setting. There is never any reason to lower the mowing height of St Aug. One more last thing, whatever that weed is should die out from Weed-b-Gone. Be sure to use the Weed-b-Gone in the black bottle with the purple label. That is the only one safe for St Augustine. But do not spray and breath the spray or get it on your or pets. Keep the kids and pets away until it has dried. The less of that you can get away with using the better. Your lawn looks very good, by the way...except for the minor amount of dead stuff. We see some pretty crappy lawns in the forums. Hopefully yours will never become one of those....See MoreFresh horse manure...is it too hot?
Comments (11)Composted manure breaks down extremely slowly. Even with high application rates, you'll probably need to supplement it with a quicker release organic fertilizer like SBM. After five years or so of annual compost application, you may be able to eliminate the supplemental nitrogen applications. The amount of time is dependant on the particular type of grass. If your lawn is low in organic matter, compost is a great way to jump start an organic program. However, once your organic program is underway, other organic materials, such as SBM, is much easier to transport and apply. The quote below if from the University of Colorado. "The nitrogen in composted manure will be primarily in stable organic forms and first year release rates will be significantly less than with fresh manure. For example, in composted dairy manure, only 5-20% of the nitrogen will be available the first year. In soils low in organic content, this can lead to a nitrogen deficiency unless an additional quick release nitrogen source is supplemented." -Deerslayer...See MoreThinning St. Augustine Yard
Comments (13)For chinch bugs, used an old can and placed it in an area that was half dead half alive, filled it with water and soap and waited for any of them to float to the surface. I may have had one or two, but tough to be certain. For grubs, I chose a an area half dead half alive and just searched the soil diligently. Like I mentioned, I found a few, but definitely far from an infestation. I've read this is acceptable, but wondering if even seeing chinch bugs or grubs warrants action....See MoreSt. Augustine Sod Issues
Comments (15)You can apply corn meal any time, day or night, rain or shine. Once you see it work like that, it's easy to get excited about using more. It works both as a fertilizer and the anti fungal. As a fertilizer there are better organic fertilizers; however, if you use any of them more frequently, everything seems to get better. Morpeuspa has tried to overdo organic fertilizer and was not able to do it. He fertilized with two organics every weekend all season long. No problems. I did something similar by using corn gluten meal once a month all season. No problems - other than lots of grass to mow. As for watering, use temperature as your guide. With temps in 70s water no more frequently than once every 3 weeks. I stretch it out longer, but I always water deeply when I do water. Ideally you'll get enough rain in the fall and spring that you won't have to water again until June or July....See More- 7 years ago
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Brett Campbell