Need Zoysia help!

danman421 – posted 21 January 2010 09:16

History:

Ok, so I bought my house last April and it had crappy grass, a mix of about everything that was patchy at best. I had a huge Bradford Pair in the front that I had removed (I don’t like them at all). So now im left with a bigger patch. I had the same guy that did my tree kill all my grass (he gave me a deal on both or I would have done this myself), mow very short and then aerate with Zenith Zoysia.

Sorry this is so long winded!

Now (or past summer/fall) a lot of weeds and Centipede came back, some Zoysia came through though. There are large patches of Centipede and it is shooting through the large patch where the tree was, so its doing well (which I dont want). I was watering twice a day for about 20 min, I live in Southeast NC so this is right.

Future: I want to know what I can do to wake this Zoysia up and let it hit the ground running to take over everywhere. There are a lot of weeds as I said and the Centipede seems to be taking over but there are a lot of patches of Zoysia in there…

Any help? Thanks in advance!

turfgrass – posted 21 January 2010 18:31

zoysia is the slowest growing of all the grasses…patience and water are your friends.

as far as the centipede is concerned…if you can get your hands on some “MSMA” (which I think is in the process of being removed from the market for homeowners), you’ll be in good shape.

the zoysia needs to be mature enough for you to spray it though.

danman421 – posted 05 April 2010 09:15

Everything is starting to green up and I need to do something I am sure of it but I am at a total loss as to WHAT. I have mowed to keep the weeds to a minimum but they grow fast. Can I spray this MSMA even though the Zoysia is not well established yet? What should I water now? Also what is an easy way to distinguish young Zoysia from anything else right now even though its greening up?

ken4255 – posted 06 April 2010 09:08

I think it is very difficult to grow Zoysia from seed. I once spent the $50 for a small bag of seed and I don’t think any of it germinated. My brother had some success by growing it in a separate planter he built, then he tried transplanting it. It did grow in that situation, but not enough to do much with his yard. Eventually he gave up and sodded with El Toro.

I don’t see how you can plant the seed in an area already choked out with weeds and expect the zoysia to outcompete everything. I don’t think zoysia is a great pick for the budget-conscious. You could buy a few pieces of sod and wait several years for it to spread, or you could just sod the whole area.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lawns/msg1000041216354.html

mx-40 – posted 19 April 2010 15:13

I agree about the difficulty of grown Zenith Zoysia from seed. I tried it two years in a row and while I have a good stand in place now, it was VERY difficult. Mainly because the time required for the zenith seed to germinate is so long. All (and I mean all) weeds known to man germinate faster and that means crowding out the poor zoysia seed before it has a chance to grow.

The good news is that if you have some areas where the zoysia is fairly dense, then you can use them as a sod farm of sorts. Using a plugger (I suggest the round ProPlugger because it’s the quickest that I’ve found/used) you can plug your sparse areas to help spread the zoysia.

I helped my son-in-law establish a complete lawn using this method. The “sod farm” was my Zenith Zoysia lawn 🙂

Good Luck.

Alex_in_FL – posted 23 April 2010 14:56

Keep the grass cut fairly close – that should favor the zoysia. Also, put out several pans and turn on your sprinklers. See how long it takes to get between 1/2 and 3/4 inches of water in each pan. Set your sprinklers for that long.

Use a low nitrogen fertilzier. Zoysia doesn’t need lots of fertilizer but weeds and c-pede like nitrogen.

Use MSMA, 2,4-D or DSMA to control the weeds in zoysia and kill the centipede.

Best of luck to you!