Dubya's Lawn Journal (Zoysia, St. Augustine)

[dubyadubya87]

Howdy all! New forum member after creeping and reading posts for quite some time.

Starting this thread to document and detail my front lawn renovation so I can get any pointers, advice and also review my progress. Hopefully I can get the experts out there to weigh in with their experience.

A little background: The front lawn in question 'came with' the house and is the original centipede lawn which I assume the original owner (25 years) installed. Centipede would probably rank lowest on my desirable turf grasses because I enjoy frequent mowing, fertilizing, spraying, tinkering etc. It's my 'therapy'! But given the expense of moving and settling in, I decided to make do as much as possible.

The first two years (this will be my third spring in the home) have been a broad strokes approach to getting the lawn in passable condition. With the significantly smaller lawn I was able to ditch the riding tractor for a basic Scotts reel mower. That, plus post-emergent weed control (Trimec) and light fertilization yielded good enough results that I started a pre-emergent (Balan, Treflan) program, applying in August (2019) and this February. Now what I'm left with is a few patches of centipede and many bare spots where the crabgrass was.

My initial thought was to overseed with centipede, but since I'd be doing the heavy lifting of seeding, why not switch entirely? So I've decided to kill the existing centipede (as much as possible) and seed with Zenith Zoysia once soil temps are ideal (northeast Texas).

Until it's warm enough to seed, my plan is to start killing the existing lawn with glyphosate. I'm told that with the stolon spreading action of centipede, this could take time? During this, I also plan to begin leveling and prepping the soil by bringing in screened compost. I have no illusions that this will be weed seed free, but my thought is that I can kill most of the weeds in the compost during my destruction of the centipede. Once the soil temps get to and stay around 70, I'll seed, fertilize and cover with top soil.

I'll be posting progress pictures and welcome any feedback or pointers. Thank you.

[pennstater2005]

@dubyadubya87 Welcome to TLF! Can’t wait for some pics!

[dubyadubya87]

Okay, here is my front yard/project site as of this morning. You'll see the recent tree I removed which will definitely help in another month or so when I plant my grass seed. Bare spots were where crabgrass had taken over, but you can also see yellowing and dead spots in the centipede from the one application of glyphosate. Weather permitting, this weekend I will begin raking out dead turf and over the next month, continue that, along with spot treatment of glyphos as needed.
Towards the end of April I'll be bringing in screened compost to incorporate, then leveling and putting out lime.
More pics to come.

[dubyadubya87]

Forgot to post pictures of my backyard St. Augustine (not sure what variety, but not Floratam). I am pretty happy with it's progress. Over the last two years a lot of the dead spots and thin areas have filled in nicely. Pre-emerge caught most of the weeds this year and what it didn't, I'm hand-weeding. I don't think I'll have to spray Trimec for weeds as I have in the past. I give a half-rate feeding every six weeks and deep water only as needed. Cut at highest setting on my 14" Scotts' (2 inches).
I'll post more pics of the backyard when it has fully greened up.

[dubyadubya87]

Prior to receiving last spray of Round-Up, 4/20/20

[dubyadubya87]

Two weeks out from scheduled seeding the sprinkler system decided to spring a leak! What started out as simply replacing one cracked valve, turned into a complete gutting of the valve system and four new valves. The 1" Toros had been in operation for 24 years!
New system has compression fittings which will make any future fixes/changes a little easier.

[dubyadubya87]

The hard part is finally done and now it's time to try and be patient while waiting for germination.

Based on the soil test, 55lbs of lime and 1.3 lbs of phosphate were added per/M sqft. Fertilizer was spread and then the whole area received one final deep scraping with a hard tined rake prior to seed. Three lbs of Zenith Zoysia was spread over the 2300 sqft, then raked in lightly with a plastic leak rake. Finally the whole area was compacted with a lawn roller. Sprinklers are set at 10 minutes for 10 am, 1 pm and 4 pm. If needed, I can manually do another in the evening or early morning.

[dubyadubya87]

I keep convincing myself I'm seeing sprouts, but with East Texas having overnight lows around 50 degrees, I doubt I am. Keeping the seed bed moist and waiting.
Edit: Have since turned down sprinklers from 10 minutes per watering to 8. Too much standing water at 10 minutes.

[dubyadubya87]

I had 5 or 6 frisbee sized bare spots in my St. Augustine in my back yard. Scraped these out well and dressed with top soil to encourage fill-in. The lime and fertilizer has the color looking great. With the cool temperatures, only needing to mow weekly at 2".

[dubyadubya87]

This is the first growth that I am (fairly) confident is in fact my Zoysia. Last night's low of mid-50's in East Texas is indicative of the past week, but the next 10 days shows a warming trend with overnight lows in the mid-60's. I won't clog the journal with a day by day of the below, but may post a string of them once it's all come up.
I'll answer this before I'm asked: Yes, the soil does look like it has a lot of bark in it. This is just one small area, at the corner, that I had to raise up and level. The local yard was out of good top soil and this was a screened compost with added sand. I figure if I've got sprouts coming up in this, it's going to explode in the top soil.