Lime Green St. Augustine

gkr – posted 10 July 2003 15:24

I live in Houston, TX and we have been receiving a good amount of rain each afternoon. I am beginning to have patches of lime green colored grass. It happened last summer as well about this time and couldn’t seem to get any help or thoughts on the cause. If anyone knows what this is or what is causing it and how to fix it, please help!

Will-PCB – posted 11 July 2003 21:12

Try putting some Iron down. That usually darkens my St. Augustine up very nicely.

Of course though, it’s not immediate. You do have to have a little bit of patience.

Dchall_San_Antonio – posted 13 July 2003 11:53

We have the same problem in San Antonio after deep rains. I was in Houston yesterday and saw what you have. It’s the same.

The reason for it, as I’ve been told, is based on the substantially alkaline soil. You have to artificially change the pH to grow the grass. That’s easily done, but rain changes it back. You can only affect a few inches of the root zone and normally that’s enough. The rain changes all that. With a foot or two of rain, the pH turns back to alkaline and apparently ties up the iron in the soil or otherwise makes it not available due to the alkalinity.

The best solution for my yard has been Texas Greensand – BAR NONE. Ironite just gets laughed at. Anything you can find that is called greensand should work for you. In fact you might be the only house with green grass if you use it. I was. As an experiment I applied it on the front and not the back. The front greend up great in 3 weeks. The back remained lime green until this spring.

The biggest problem with greensand is that it is a damp product. It is sandy consistancy but damp and absolutely will not go through any kind of spreader. You have to hand throw it or mix it with corn meal or something dry to get it through a spreader.

Houston is notoriously NON-organic. You might try finding greensand at Southwest Fertilizer, 5828 Bissonnet ( http://www.yardgeek.com/fertilizer_view_prod.cfm?SKU=21112 ) or at Teas Nursery on Ballair Blvd (doubtful).