Need advice on 1.5 year old sod that's brown with green spots
Jason K
3 years ago
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dchall_san_antonio
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agoRelated Discussions
2 week old Zoysia palisades sod - Brown spots
Comments (2)If and when you cannot lift the sod from the ground, you need to cut way back on watering. Your sentence about water needs more explanation, but new sod should be watered lightly 3x per day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner time. Once the sod roots have knit to the ground underneath, then cut the watering in half. Start by going to every other day with 2x to 3x per day. A week later cut to once every 2 days but water a little longer to get the water deeper into the soil. Ideally by summer you should be watering once per week and applying a full inch at a time. That regimen should work even under most watering restrictions. Zoysia has a problem with recovery from injury. Here in San Antonio we had a lot of rain in the spring of 2013. Some of the zoysia lawns got a disease which browned it in some spots. Those spots never recovered in 2013. I'm watching them and expect to see them recover fully by next week. But that is the sort of poor performance which chases 90% of Texas zoysia owners away from that and back to St Augustine. These two hold-out zoysia owners are sitting in multi million dollar homes, so if they can't have excellent zoysia lawns, I doubt if anyone can. Here's what I expect to see in your lawn. Those brown spots will remain brown until the brown pieces break off and fall onto the soil below. Then they will turn gray as they decompost but no new grass will fill in. You may or may not have common bermuda grass trying to get a start in there. If it does, then you will forever have a mix of zoysia and bermuda. If you had this lawn installed, get them back out there and insist that the brown sod be replaced with green. They will, in turn, insist back that the grass will recover. Well, that depends on what your definition of recover is, because it will recover...by April of 2015, but not before. And you can't know what will happen to the spots between now and then....See Moreyear old sod looks like hell
Comments (9)Without a soil test, I'd go to a high nitrogen fertilizer instead. Something like 29-0-3 (just an example) where the first number is much higher than anything else. Since you haven't fed in fall, feed as soon as you can at bag rate. In three weeks, do it again if it's been raining reasonably regularly. If the grass has just stopped growing three weeks after that, feed one last time. If it's already going into dormancy, skip it. Next year, feed on Memorial Day, Labor Day, October 1st, and when growth stops (if it's later than October 20th or so). Skip the last feeding if growth stops earlier than that. If by the end of this season it still looks very bad, a soil test is in order....See More3 week old el toro zoysia sod turning brown
Comments (3)You should have been keeping the sod moist by watering it LIGHTLY, three times per day, for the first 3 weeks after putting the sod down. It doesn't sound like you were doing that. Regardless, it sounds like it's wet enough now. Zoysia has a fatal flaw in my book. When it goes bad, it doesn't seem to matter what month it went bad, it remains dead looking for the remainder of the season. Then in April (or March for you in FL), it finally comes back like nothing ever happened. So whether your problem was too much water or not enough water, the grass is likely to be "dormant" for the rest of the year. Can you lift any of the squares of sod or are they all knitted down to the soil by new roots? Did you get watering instructions from the sod installer? If so, what were they? Have you measured the output of your sprinklers? You can do that by timing how long it takes your sprinklers to fill several cat food or tuna cans placed around the yard. My sprinkler takes 8 hours to fill the cans. My neighbor's high flow system takes 20 minutes. It all depends on YOUR system. Once you have that time, that will become the time you water every time you need to water. It might seem like a long time to water but you're not going to do it very often. For example I did not water my Texas desert lawn until mid July this year. Why? Because the roots on my lawn were deep enough to capture deeeeeeep water from the occasional rain we got. But my yard might have been an exception for other reasons. Here's the basic watering plan for the US (except for the triangle from Green River, UT down to Palm Springs, CA over to Junction, TX). Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means a full inch at a time. Infrequently means with temps in the 90s or above, once per week. With temps in the 80s, once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, once every 3 weeks. What this does is develop very deep roots which can take advantage of every rain storm for a good long time. It also allows the soil to dry out completely at the surface which prevents new weed seeds from sprouting. Proper watering is quite often the last correction people need to make to get their lawn to the next level of perfection and stop using herbicides to kill weeds. Why did you pick zoysia instead of the more normal bermuda or St Augustine?...See More1 year old sod (canada): Dethatch/Aerate bad?
Comments (14)Thanks for the tips everyone. That's right dchall i'm only considering it due to seeing it on all the annual lawn care programs. Can anyone link me this Aggressive (weekly/monthly) feeding program? I layed down some Scotts Starter fert on Aug 28th (first app ever) and then layed down some organic fert a week later (Sept 5th). It's been bouncing back really well with a nice dark green in most of the areas. There is a small area in the middle of my backyard that's seen the most browning and i suspect it was due to grubs. I plan on laying down some nematodes this week and next spring i'll hire out a company to spray some Acelepryn for the seasonal control. As you can see in the picture below, the fert apps have got my grass greening up nicely but the area in the middle seems to be having the most issues. I also need to work on my "Domination Line" (and put up a fence to hide that hideous excuse for a lawn from the new back facing neighbors). At least you can see what the kbg sod looked like brand new in that shot from the neighbors lawn. The company came back to resod a few patches which is that dark green. So would some more apps of organics help or are people using synthetics for their aggressive fall feedings?...See MoreJason K
3 years agorifis (zone 6b-7a NJ)
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agodchall_san_antonio
3 years agoJason K
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agoJason K
3 years agoJason K
3 years agodchall8 .
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agodanielj_2009
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agodanielj_2009
3 years agoJason K
3 years agoJason K
3 years agoJason K
3 years agodchall8 .
3 years agodanielj_2009
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agorifis (zone 6b-7a NJ)
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agodchall8 .
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agodanielj_2009
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agodanielj_2009
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agodanielj_2009
3 years agodchall8 .
3 years agomorpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
3 years agodchall8 .
3 years agodanielj_2009
3 years ago
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