Repacing Lawn with St. Augustine Palmetto

Georgia_Dad – posted 17 August 2007 13:43

I live in the north metro area of Atlanta. My yard is currently Fescue. I have several questions concerning palmetto.

1) Can I introduce s.a. palmetto plugs into my yard and let it just choke out the fescue without having to rototill the whole yard? My yard is ~12,000 s.f.. Rototilling the whole yard would be a very large project.

2) I have two patches of the dreaded Zoysia in my front yard. One patch is ~10′ x 15′ and the other is ~5′ wide by 40′ long across the front of the yard along the street. The strange part is they don’t spread or move to other parts of the yard. There is no zoysia in the back yard. Just those two patches I fight with every year. Question, will s.a. palmetto over take the zoysia or do I need to do the sourced earth routine.

3) Are there any lawn care books directly pertaining to planting and care of St. Augustine?

Thanks in advance for the help.

wilson – posted 17 August 2007 22:20

Avoid Palmetto. It is not resistant to st augustine decline. Raleigh is much better. See my post concerning this:https://turfgrass.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000067.html

TexanOne – posted 21 August 2007 01:25

1: You can strategically place St Augustine plugs in and eventually you will have almost 100% coverage, but it will probably takes years to happen. A better idea is to buy sod, and install the sod as you would the plugs – just farther apart. Again, this will take a couple of years to accomplish and have the St Augustine take over.

2: St Augustine has the ability to take over Zoysia if the Zoysia is not excessively thick and healthy. St Augustine will attempt to send stolons (runners) over the top of the Zoysia and will generally be successful. If the Zoysia is thick, the St Augustine stolons will still attempt to send stolons over the top, but you will end up with an awful-looking mess with two different grass textures. If you really want to be rid of the Zoysia, I would suggest you Roundup the Zoysia, cut it short, and heavily install St Augustine sod in place.

3: There are no books that I know of that specifically address St Augustine culture.

Wilson is correct – avoid Palmetto and go with Raleigh. Palmetto is St Augustine Decline (SAD) virus susceptible and a poor choice:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_augustine_grass

SAD virus infections may not be problem in Georgia, but I would not take a chance on Palmetto. It is probably too cold in the Atlanta area to consider Floratam, or other marginally winter hardy St Augustine varieties. Amerishade seems to also be a good choice, but I have no personal experience with it. Overall, Raleigh is a good choice – it has performed well for almost 30 years since its introduction and can withstand winter lows to near zero degrees F.