Question about grass type

cordawg – posted 18 May 2010 00:51

Hello. I am purchasing a new home, it is actually a new build. I am trying to decide which grass type to sod with. I live in College Station, TX and would appreciate any help. The local suppliers basically have bermuda, zoysia, and st. augustine. The area will have full sun for several years until some trees I plant mature. Just in case people are not familiar with College Station we are basically in the middle of Houston, Austin, and Dallas. I have 3 kids ages 10, 8, and 6, so they will play on the turf once it is established.

Thank you for any help and advice you can give.

ken4255 – posted 18 May 2010 10:46

Personally, I don’t like the look of St. Augustine — too coarse for me. Maybe those dwarf varieties are better, but I haven’t seen them.

Here’s a comparison chart.

http://topturfsc.com/grass.html

I don’t think Bermuda does as well as zoysia in choking out the weeds. (I still hit my zoysia with pre- and post-emergent.) And I think Bermuda needs more fertilizer to look green and lush. If the kids are going to be running on the lawn a lot, Bermuda will recover faster than zoysia. The slow recovery rate of my zoysia has been an ongoing source of frustration. If you go with zoysia, I would get a faster spreading variety, such as El Toro, and stay away from Meyer.

cordawg – posted 18 May 2010 19:11

Thank you for the reply. I was talking today with a couple of the local suppliers and the one they can easily get is palisades. Does anybody have any experiences with Palisades Zoysia? The variety of bermuda they use is tif hybrid. I have looked all of them up but I am still not quite sure. From my reading I am going to have to keep them all well irrigated in the summer, to keep them green, so that is not an issue between them. But zoysia and bermuda do handle drought better. I really want to make the best decision right off the bat since it is a new build and I can just start from scratch.

Am I correct in that zoysia and st. augustine’s wear tolerance is basically the same. The difference being that st. augustine recovers more quickly. The advantages I can think of to go with zoysia are basically that it looks better than st. augustine and it is more drought tolerant. But then st. augustine is more shade tolerant and recovers much more quickly. Uhhggg. If only there were a perfect type of turf grass that was good in the shade, choked out weeds, is good in the sun, and looks great, as well as is resistant to pests and disease.

[This message has been edited by cordawg (edited 18 May 2010).]

ken4255 – posted 19 May 2010 10:55

https://turfgrass.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000001.html

This thread on this forum has links to the Purdue and NTEP zoysia studies that compare different varieties, and some of the posts discuss Palisades. Palisades looks like it is near the top in terms of ability to recover. I don’t know anything about St. Augustine wear tolerance. I did try one square of St. Augustine sod once, and it did grow in a shady spot where the zoysia wouldn’t grow, but I hated the look so I killed it all. In my shady spots, I ended up going with pine straw and azaleas.