DEAD ZOYSIA-HELP!!!!

guitrman1 – posted 30 June 2006 19:38

I live in south florida, and am having a problem with some zoysia sod that started out great. It took well to our sandy yard, and established great. I have two sections of the yard where I have laid the grass. One of the sections is thriving, looks great, growing like wildfire. The other section started off the same way, but since I cut the grass for the first time it looks like it is dying. After it was established I cut both of the sections the same day, the main section is still growing well, but the other looks like it is dying/dead. Any help would be greatly apppreciated. It is the rainy season here now, so I have my sprinkler system set to go on automatically every other day for about 20 minutes in each zone. I dont know what else to do. Thanks

guitrman1 – posted 03 July 2006 15:24

is there anybody out there……………..

TexanOne – posted 04 July 2006 02:01

I’ll try to help you guitrman1, but I don’t know much about South Florida conditions and my growing conditions are completely different of what you have.

It sounds like you may have Brown Patch disease but it’s hard to say without actually seeing the turf or close-up pictures of the dying areas. Here’s a good website that may help you diagnose what’s wrong:

http://aggieturf.tamu.edu/aggieturf2/disease/disindex.html

Check out the Brown Patch description to see if it fits what you have going on.

A lot of folks swear by Zoysia, but I have had really mixed results with it. I planted 4000 sq ft of Zenith seven years ago and mixed a little Palisades and El Toro sod in the bare areas where the Zenith failed to thrive or come up. Today, I have less than 500 sq ft of Zoysia thriving in my yard. The other 3500 sq ft were completely over-run by St Augustine – which looks better and is far tougher than any Zoysia around here anyway.

I’m sure that Zoysia is first class turfgrass in certain parts of the country, but not where I live. I had problems with Zoysia the entire time I tried to cultivate it. Zoysia is a beautiful turfgrass but a royal pain to maintain in hot, semiarid areas.

guitrman1 – posted 04 July 2006 02:43

Thank you so much for your reply. I will take a look at the link you posted, and in the next day or so I will take some pictures of the yard so you can see what i am talking about, I will put them on the web and post the link here. From the research I have done so far it seems as if the type of Zoysia I laid down is called Empress Zoysia. Here is a link to that info

http://www.sodsolutions.com/photo_gallery/index.shtml#empressThanks again for your input. Rich

TexanOne – posted 04 July 2006 03:37

Looking forward to the pics. Maybe we can figure this out…

guitrman1 – posted 05 July 2006 15:12

Ok ,here are the photos of my yard. I noticed today that even the section that was thriving is starting to die. I am thinking it could be some kind of disease, but what the hell do I know. Thanks again for your help. Rich

http://www.jcleeman.com/yard/

TexanOne – posted 06 July 2006 02:12

Wow! That Empress Zoysia looks like it has been wholesale wiped out. I don’t know diddly-squat about sandy, humid, South Florida, so my opinion is going to be worth about what you paid for it…

However, it does appear from the pictures the zoysia died from either too much water which either drown the plants, or more probably because of the soil texture – too much water created a fungal problem that spread and wiped it out fast. You mentioned that you have the irrigation system come on every other day for 20 minutes and it’s the rainy season? I say this is probably the cause because not even insect damage works that fast (to my knowledge). Have you cut off the irrigation to see what happens? What happens if you pull on the dead turf areas – does it easily pull up? Try cutting the water off to see if that helps. At this point, I don’t see how it would hurt anything. How much full sun exposure are the parts that first started dying out getting?

Also, is there anything green underneath all that dead surface matting? If you don’t see any new growth soon, you will spend a looooong time waiting for the zoysia to fill back in – zoysia is very slow to cover by spreading. I’m talking years to cover an area you have in the pictures. Unless you object to this idea, you may be better off plugging in St Augustinegrass in the dead areas – but I’m more of a St Augustinegrass fan…

Anyway, I vote a fungus got your zoysia. Any Florida boys that have experience with this type of problem are welcome to jump in any time to help out here… I’ve read some posts here that mention something about applying corn meal (check other posts) that check fungal growth, but turf fungal problems in West Texas are about as common as a desert cactus in South Florida – and I don’t know much about fungal problems.

Come on – somebody jump in and lend a hand here…

guitrman1 – posted 06 July 2006 09:46

I will turn off the sprinkler system to see what happens. I just went out to pull on the grass and it is still pretty well rooted. You have to tug pretty hard to get it to come up.The section that looks dead gets full sun all day, but there is another section of the yard that gets the same amount of sun and it is still very green. There is nothing green under the dead surface. The weird thing is, if you look at the second photo in the gallery, is that there are still little patches of green grass, whereas the rest of that entire area looks totally dead.

Bumming hard, Rich

RickW – posted 06 July 2006 18:46

Some tips for the zoysia:

– Don’t overwater. I just read that you should water heavy only when the grass needs it, instead of watering shallow frequently. This prevents fungal infection.

– When you cut the grass, don’t ever cut more than 1/3 of the grass.

– Zoysia doesn’t require a lot of nutrition. I’d say go easy on the fertilizer, if ever.

– When Zoysia gets stressed, whether from too much heat, or too much cold – it will temporarily go brown, but it should green up again.

– Zoysia likes slightly (not overly) acidic soil. Do you know what the PH of your soil is?

I planed companion zoysia seed about a month ago, its coming in very slow, hopefully I can get it going.

RickW – posted 06 July 2006 18:47

I just had a though – in case that dead looking area takes a long time coming back, you could always plug out small pieces from your good area, and spread them out in the brown area.

U_P_turf_newby – posted 12 November 2006 08:16

How is the Zoysia doing now? I live in Pompano and would like to see it!

gary66 – posted 19 December 2006 12:13

I have zoysia in my front yard and is thriving well in all areas but by the road, it has weeds in it and looks to be dead. I do have one bit of info about the grass, you may want to turn you sprinklers off around Nov and turn back on the end of Feb. This will prevent the grass from getting fungus, this is from a friend that is the grounds guy at Sawgrass country club.

sadder2 – posted 11 November 2008 11:56

http://www.american-lawns.com/grasses/zoysia.htmlHas very good information on the “zoysia” types of grass, please refer to this and research things many times before even considering a major purchase such as zoysia grass for your lawn.I’m merely a 15 year old kid living in the US, i’m not trying to pursuade anyone to go for a different grass or get rid of their grass, i have no bias to anything grass related i’m merely here to give as much help as others. I’m also not trying to put anyone down as though they didn’t do enough research or are dumb and i’m smarter. I hope the website helped.

mrmumbels – posted 05 June 2010 19:19

Sounds like my crappy zoysia. Anyone having any luck with it?