My St. Augustine is dying

Mic – posted 09 August 2005 12:17

I need help with my St. Augustine grass. I’m developing brown spots and even areas as big as 4 ft. in diameter where the grass has died. I live in Texas and it gets very dry so I water atleast once every other day with an automatic sprinkler system. I fertilized in the spring with a weed and feed and wonder if I over fertilized. If so, what can I do now. Also, I heard that june bugs will burrow in St. Augustine and kill the grass. Any help is much appreciated.

Tungsten33333 – posted 09 August 2005 21:36

Oh boy. you sure have screwed up badly! Start practicing organic yard care!!! Google it.

Start using water hose. Automatic sprinkler are worthless anyway. Soak slowly for an hour or so so you’d drain the water very deeply. Once a week per zone should be enough during hot dry weather.

Get regular corn meal from animal feed store. That will help with brown spots which is caused by harmful fungus. You dont want to use fungucide products because they will kill benefical fungus too. Spread corn meal about 20lbs per 1000 sqft.

It will help a lot to spread finished compost to start growing microbes in the soil. one cubic yard per 1000 sqft. it will be 1/3 of an inch deep. use organic fertlizer, corn meal, any protein based grains to feed microbes which will feed the roots and areate the soil which in turn absorb more water and deeply. Use Corn GLUTEN meal in feburary and septmeber for added nitrogen boost. It probably won’t hurt to add a bag of greensand for each backyard and front yard since it contains irons. if your SA tend to get yellow in the middle of the summer despite using fertilizer late spring, it might be due to lack of iron. Do this and you should have very healthy lawn. using chemical stuff will not help. It’s like giving steriods. Long term, they tend to screw thing up….

Tungsten33333 – posted 09 August 2005 21:41

If you think you have june bug problems, get benefical nematodes. Google it. They will eat grubs and all kinds of insects including fleas, ants and ticks. Try them after deep soaking. Plant them at evening so they’d dug their way down in the soil.

Oh yeah, keep the cutting hieght to at least 3 inches. 3.5 or 4 inches might even be better for the moment till you get things worked out then you can go down to 3 inches. Tall grasses tend to grow deeper roots esp with very deep infrequent watering.