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St. Augustine not uniform throughout

3K views 22 replies 5 participants last post by  Darth_V8r 
#1 ·
This is my 1st post so would like to go ahead and say hello everyone. Am a beginner who is very interested in lawn and garden. Just not as knowledgeable about it. I know the basics i think but it does not seem to be enough unfortunately as i feel i am killing my grass. I've inherited a St. Augustine lawn about 1 year ago and really could not do much with it until about 3 months ago. Throughout the process of learning i believe i am killing my lawn. I believe the variant of St. Augustine is Palmetto. Currently we are getting a lot of rain. Things really seemed to take a downward spiral when i did 1 cut at 3.0 inches and another at 3.5 (which i thought was recommended), also did a side discharge which i believe only helped to spread the weeds. Later found out that St. Augustine where i live should be cut at the tallest height. The mower will go up to 4.5. The mower is the 21" Ego with high lift non-mulching blade.

Things i've noticed that have hurt the lawn are:






Things that seemed to have helped:





Things i am unsure if it helped or not:


What i've done so far (started keeping track on a calendar in August):
August 4th - Scotts Bonus S (29/0/10)
August 17th - Core aeration on brown spots, followed by Scotts Disease X, and then Leskos 16/4/8 fertilizer on sidewalk patch of grass (did not want to use on the whole lawn).
August 18th - Dicamba (with Ortho Weed B Gone) on front yard.
August 24th - Applied Milorganite and Atrazine to whole lawn.
August 28th - Installed 18 St. Augustine Palmetto grass plugs mostly on patch by sidewalk and some on the rest of the front lawn.

This is what the yard currently looks like:






































My current solutions (im starting to lose hope):
1) I know the yard is kind of a mess. Getting the cub cadet shredder chipper vacuum.
2) and/or just bringing in the pros to get things green and filled in again. But will feel so defeated.

Also, no pre-emergent was put down. Did not even know what that was earlier this year.

Any advice, ridicule or comments, etc ?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. I know its a long post.
 
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#2 ·
Welcome to the forum

There's no bad question here, so let's start. Get on a fertilizer program. Look at what other people or doing for their lawn and then decide for yourself. I do something like

36-0-0
0-0-60

I put down both at either .50 or 1 pds per 1k

Next your herbcide program. You should read up on the Bermuda triangle
https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=13

This will apply to a St Augustine lawn just watch temperatures

Glad your here
 
#3 ·
I think you just got overeager! In a period of 20 days you put down three different fertilizers and three rounds of herbicide. That's just too much for the poor grass. St. Augustine usually is fertilized at most once a month, not once a week. Herbicides you need to be careful with as St. Augustine is pretty sensitive to them. I'd back off all that, and just mow and water appropriately, and treat for any fungus that pops up, maybe do a preventive fungicide program alternating the disease x with the bio advanced propiconazole fungicide. But I'd hold off the herbicides until the grass looks healthy and strong.
 
#4 ·
CenlaLowell said:
Welcome to the forum

There's no bad question here, so let's start. Get on a fertilizer program. Look at what other people or doing for their lawn and then decide for yourself. I do something like

36-0-0
0-0-60

I put down both at either .50 or 1 pds per 1k

Next your herbcide program. You should read up on the Bermuda triangle
https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=13

This will apply to a St Augustine lawn just watch temperatures

Glad your here
Thanks CenlaLowel, am very glad to be here. Have to admit i felt a little relief just signing up.

Had never heard of going according the bermuda triangle for herbicide. Will definitely be reading up on it.

I see you mentioned 1 lbs / 1k . I guess this is something i still need to do, which is measure the lawn. Are these measurements something that needs to be really precise?
 
#5 ·
ktgrok said:
I think you just got overeager! In a period of 20 days you put down three different fertilizers and three rounds of herbicide. That's just too much for the poor grass. St. Augustine usually is fertilized at most once a month, not once a week. Herbicides you need to be careful with as St. Augustine is pretty sensitive to them. I'd back off all that, and just mow and water appropriately, and treat for any fungus that pops up, maybe do a preventive fungicide program alternating the disease x with the bio advanced propiconazole fungicide. But I'd hold off the herbicides until the grass looks healthy and strong.
Hi ktgrok , thanks for the response. I think your right about maybe being too eager. And on top of that fertilizer i was adding we had heavy rain plus the clippings from mowing. What was also happening was i would put down a treatment and then the following week i do not see anything happening and the weeds look like they are even growing more however at least with some of them starting to turn a bright yellow. When i saw what looked like more weeds i thought they were resisting. Then i think to myself instead of of just using dicamba , maybe i should use atrazine also. It sounds like this lawn is really sensitive in general. However something i've noticed in the 2 applications of "propiconazole" (1 about 3 months ago and the other a little over a month ago) is that the grass seems to turn like a mushy brown color about a week later. Thankfully i only sprayed certain areas. So have been very nervous to put anymore down. This was before i started to track my tasks on the calendar. Last application was with DiseaseX only. Thanks, for the advice i will try to mow at 4.5" as i understand the leaf height is very important to protect from weeds and stolons. Its been a slow process trying to get the grass to grow again, do you think its going dormant because of all the stress?. One week sure feels like a long time. I keep looking at the lawn everyday to see if anything has changed. Have a feeling i'll be learning all about patience with this new hobby.
 
#6 ·
Also forgot to mention this is a "really" soggy soil. Does that indicate anything good or bad in general? My guess is that soggy soil drains better. From what i understand is that this is supposed to be a sandy soil. In some areas it does seem sandy and in other areas not at all. Would you guys recommend any kind of soil testing at this point?
 
#7 ·
kb02gt said:
CenlaLowell said:
Welcome to the forum

There's no bad question here, so let's start. Get on a fertilizer program. Look at what other people or doing for their lawn and then decide for yourself. I do something like

36-0-0
0-0-60

I put down both at either .50 or 1 pds per 1k

Next your herbcide program. You should read up on the Bermuda triangle
https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=13

This will apply to a St Augustine lawn just watch temperatures

Glad your here
Thanks CenlaLowel, am very glad to be here. Have to admit i felt a little relief just signing up.

Had never heard of going according the bermuda triangle for herbicide. Will definitely be reading up on it.

I see you mentioned 1 lbs / 1k . I guess this is something i still need to do, which is measure the lawn. Are these measurements something that needs to be really precise?
Nah but get them pretty close using a measurement roller or tape.
 
#8 ·
I see about 90% weeds in your pictures, which is not uncommon in yards down here. I was dealing with the same thing this spring. It will get better, just takes a lot of time. The first step is to really determine what is weed and what is st aug...some weeds will fool you at first. Some of your stolon pics are also weeds, not sure if you knew that. Spraying herbicides on a lawn that is 90% weeds will get you a lawn that looks 90% brown. It will take years for the grass to fill in, but if you do everything right, it should

I don't like dicamba on st aug, or pretty much anything from the box stores even when they say they are supposed to be safe. Atrazine is fine for now, but you'll have to get some more specific stuff once you see what weeds are left. I didn't have much luck with that Lesco 16-4-8 either. The Scotts southern 31-0-10 works well, as does other similar cheaper brand ferts with high N and K...no P down here. With the sandy soil and heavy rains .5lbs of N every 2 weeks is much better than 1lb once a month. In areas that I really want to grow in faster I hit with about 1/3lb of N every week (cheap hand crank spreader comes in handy here). Let the grass recover before using any more herbicides.

I truly hate my palmetto areas. It has no business in Florida. Floratam grows so much better here and luckily will out compete the palmetto. I transplanted a lot of floratam runners to some bare areas this spring and they have really filled out. I have much better luck planting sprigs than sod or plugs...sprigs seem to just spread a lot faster...and they are free. I carefully pull them and their roots out of flower beds, or from where they are trying to grow into the canal.
 
#10 ·
I noted on your OP that you said you were not sure if mage helped or did not -- Image is VERY slow acting. After a week, you MIGHT see some yellowing of the tramp grasses.

You may have overlooked one of the best things for your yard -- sand. All your bare spots, throw some sand on it -- assuming it's level enough to not run off. Plus fresh sand will help sort of dilute the sheer amount of chemical you put on your yard. It is late in the season for spot repair, but definitely sand patch your bare spots for next year's green up.

You can also grab sprigs of it from one area and just spike the bare spots with it. Sometimes it'll just take off. Word of caution, Palmetto will die back on you and need resprigging on a rather regular basis, which is why I'm slowly letting it get out-competed by other grasses.
 
#11 ·
Yeah, a lot of herbicides take 2-4 weeks to kill the weed. And as someone else said, here in Florida generally you want N and K, our soils are usually already high in phosphorous (the middle number) and in some areas it is illegal to apply it. And a lot of Florida has low K, the last number.

Also, if you don't know how big your yard is you may be way over applying the herbicides. They are meant to be used with a certain amount of product over a certain amount of grass. If you don't know how much square footage you have you may have double or triple applied the herbicides without realizing it, which will absolutely kill the grass. Same with fungicide, and even fast release fertilizers.
 
#12 ·
Thanks @ktgrok , @Darth_V8r , @LawnRat , and @CenlaLowell (hopefully i didn't miss anyone) . Really appreciate all the advice/widsom. Have gotten more information than in the hours of youtube videos i was watching. Especially for this particular type of grass. Not a lot of people i noticed talking about st. aug on youtube it seems.

@ktgrok
When i went into home depot and saw the words "wont kill your grass" i figured that just meant i could use as much as i wanted without the measurement really being necessary. Yeah i was pretty much drenching the lawn with the spray bottle. I wanted the lawn to look as though it had just been watered. Did not realize a light spray was all i needed, also was worried about missing some spots (eventually ordered some BlueLazer lawn dye which didnt seem to make the lawn that blue so i guess i need to use more), but yeah was definitely a little heavy handed there. Will be getting those measurements. Hopefully this weekend if i don't have to work too much overtime.

@Darth_V8r
Okay for a second i wasn't sure if the IMAGE was a good product or not. So i will keep it around for a little while because it seems they may have changed their ingredients from Atrazine to Dicamba ?. Also I did hear someone say (on youtube) that the herbicides are best used when you 1st buy it at the store. That they can i guess they can go bad if kept in a garage for a while for example. Is this true?

Will definitely be laying off the herbacides as recommended , but do you think a pre-emergent in spring is still a good idea?

@LawnRat
Thank you for confirming the weeds. I wasn't sure. Was leaning more towards it being actual grass )=. I was looking at it and saying to myself "boy that sure looks like a regular grass blade, but different from the others". Little did i know. As for the Dicamba, that makes sense, so i wont use that anymore. But as i was mentioning to Darth_V8r above is that it seems IMAGE has switched from using Atrazine to Dicamba? Or is this just a different model/formulation of the IMAGE product? The only reason i know is that this particular person on youtube has st. augustine and they were showing the IMAGE product, and on the bottle it said Atrazine. But when i went in home depot it had Dicamba. Do they normally switch formulations like this? Also is a sprig considered to be the stolons with some grass blades attached?
 
#13 ·
Spring pre-E yes, because you'll get lots of crabgrass through your st augustine. I'm still uncertain which one to use myself.

The bottle of image I have says the active ingredients are sulfentrazone and quinclorac. Dicambra is a broadleaf killer. It often gets mixed with 24D or MSM
 
#14 ·
Darth_V8r said:
Spring pre-E yes, because you'll get lots of crabgrass through your st augustine. I'm still uncertain which one to use myself.

The bottle of image I have says the active ingredients are sulfentrazone and quinclorac. Dicambra is a broadleaf killer. It often gets mixed with 24D or MSM
Maybe its because i have the St. Augustine (purple handle) version of the product. Below is the one i had recently used on my lawn.



Thank you for the tip. Will be looking into using a product called Tenacity. Found a YouTube video where they mixed.
2 gal water
1 teaspoon of Tenacity
3 teaspoon of Surfactant
4 teaspoon of Lazer Blue Dye
They put it all into a the YT25E sprayer, and then just started covering the yard.

I've also heard corn gluten meal being good weed killer as well as being non-toxic. But i will hold off on this until the grass recovers. Then will try one section.
 
#15 ·
Just started doing a watering schedule of 30min/section on both Saturday and Sunday morning. Heard that St. Augustine needs a lot of time between waterings. Was curious what you guys have yours set to?
 
#16 ·
Based on your post i'm assuming you have an irrigation system. I have Fred Flintstone's irrigation system. 3 x 200' hoses with oscillating sprinklers on the ends. LOL. I leave them in place for at least 4 hours before moving. Minimum inch and a hlaf of water per spot. Takes me three days to fully water the yard. if I get a good rain, I can skip a week. if not, I sometimes need to just start over as soon as it's done. Especially in the hottest part of the summer. Depends on how stressed the grass looks. if it looks great, I don't water.

Bottom line, put a drinking glass in an area and run our sprinklers. TIme how long it takes to get 1.5 inches. Run them that long. Go longer intervals between watering to help encourage root growth. Frequent shallow watering makes the grass more susceptible to drought. I'll go until I can just start to see the grass stressing.
 
#17 ·
kb02gt said:
Just started doing a watering schedule of 30min/section on both Saturday and Sunday morning. Heard that St. Augustine needs a lot of time between waterings. Was curious what you guys have yours set to?
I'm watering every 7-10 days
 
#19 ·
Darth_V8r said:
Based on your post i'm assuming you have an irrigation system. I have Fred Flintstone's irrigation system. 3 x 200' hoses with oscillating sprinklers on the ends. LOL. I leave them in place for at least 4 hours before moving. Minimum inch and a hlaf of water per spot. Takes me three days to fully water the yard. if I get a good rain, I can skip a week. if not, I sometimes need to just start over as soon as it's done. Especially in the hottest part of the summer. Depends on how stressed the grass looks. if it looks great, I don't water.

Bottom line, put a drinking glass in an area and run our sprinklers. TIme how long it takes to get 1.5 inches. Run them that long. Go longer intervals between watering to help encourage root growth. Frequent shallow watering makes the grass more susceptible to drought. I'll go until I can just start to see the grass stressing.
Some of those oscillating sprinklers look like they put out a whole ton of water. Sounds like you have a huge yard though. Guess i'm blessed with having a smaller plot of land, lol. But yes i do have a small 4 station irrigation system that pulls well water from 30 feet down. Can only use this water for irrigation though. Sometimes i wish i could run the whole house off of it, but that would take some kind of filter. But i did not know that the longer you go without water the more root growth the grass will have.

Just read this article ( https://dengarden.com/landscaping/How-to-Care-for-St-Augustine-Grass ) earlier today and it was saying that the more sandy soils (which is what i have) need more frequent watering, and the grass was looking really dry today even after watering on Sat & Sun. So have now decided to go with a 3x/week schedule, possibly 4, but like you were saying, it will just depend on how dry it looks. Have this one area that is barely getting any water because there is a hedge bush in the way of the sprinkler so i may have to cut it down or trim it extremely short. Sheesh, wasn't looking forward to that :(
 
#20 ·
CenlaLowell said:
kb02gt said:
Just started doing a watering schedule of 30min/section on both Saturday and Sunday morning. Heard that St. Augustine needs a lot of time between waterings. Was curious what you guys have yours set to?
I'm watering every 7-10 days
Wish i could do this type of scheduling down here in Florida but am thinking the Palmetto will burn to a crisp. Just watered on Sat/Sun and already the grass looks so dry most likely due to sandy soils.
 
#21 ·
ktgrok said:
I don't think tenacity is labeled for use on St. Augustine.
Ahhhhhh, this is really good to know. You may have just saved my lawn from completely going kaput. Will start looking more into pre-emergents for this type of lawn. Really starting to seem like there is not too much out there on St. Augustine grass and its variants and how to care for it. There is some stuff but nothing thats nicely organized. I have the Scotts lawn phone app. Not sure if it will mention anything about a pre-emergent though.
 
#22 ·
kb02gt said:
CenlaLowell said:
kb02gt said:
Just started doing a watering schedule of 30min/section on both Saturday and Sunday morning. Heard that St. Augustine needs a lot of time between waterings. Was curious what you guys have yours set to?
I'm watering every 7-10 days
Wish i could do this type of scheduling down here in Florida but am thinking the Palmetto will burn to a crisp. Just watered on Sat/Sun and already the grass looks so dry most likely due to sandy soils.
Yup, water can drain 6-12 inches down in a day or so here, well below the root zone. So excess water applied at one time gets wasted. In clay soils that water will hang out in the root zone for days and days.
 
#23 ·
ktgrok said:
Yup, water can drain 6-12 inches down in a day or so here, well below the root zone. So excess water applied at one time gets wasted. In clay soils that water will hang out in the root zone for days and days.
That makes sense. Yeah my yard is big. Estimating 1.25-1.5 acres of grass. My soil was originally hard clay when the house was built. Previous owner did me a solid and mixed in 100 tons of sand and 100 tons of gypsum with the clay and tilled it all in. So, if I water deep, it works great. if i water shallow, I find it makes the grass even MORE drought-sensitive.

But there again, i'm the guy who wants the palmetto GONE. Not knowing your yard, if you don't have much shade, you may just need a different grass that is better suited to the conditions?
 
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