Replacing St Augustine with Overseeding

jan8j – posted 30 August 2005 07:20

I live south east of Austin, on clay soil. We just bought a house with a St Augustine lawn. The lawn is doing fine at the sides of the house and under a small tree, where it gets some shade, but most of the lawn is sunny. The St Augustine is thick, but brown, watering helps, but not enough. I want to clean out the dead undergrowth and overseed next spring with a more sun-tolerant grass. Any recomendations? I knwo bermuda will work, but I was wondering about buffalo grass or Zoyisa or something else. Thanks!

QWERTY – posted 30 August 2005 15:17

St Aug can tolerate full sun just fine. you’re probably not maintaining it right. Most people dont anyway.

1)Thatching is due to overfertilizing. Lay off fertilizing esp high nitrogen fertilizer. They also cause disease problems by weakening it’s immune system.

2) Watering shallow too frequently. Water DEEPLY for one hour a week during dry spell. Use rain gauge to determine whether you need watering or not. A rule of thumb is one inch a week. Don’t rely on the weather information for the amount of rainfall.

3)Using fungucide products is big mistake. It kills off all the good stuff that help roots absorb more water and nutrients in deep soil. 20lbs of corn meal per 1000sqft every 2-3 months is very good preventative against funugs damages. Also they help break down thatching. If you can afford it, one cubic yard of finished compost per 1000 sqft spread thinly, about 1/3 inch. Water them to the roots. No microbes, big thatching problems. Most people don’t get this part. Cornmeal also provide food for microbes. If you want more nitrogen to help SA green up more, get corn gluten meal, cottonseed meal, or any other high proten grains. A guy mentioned about using 100lbs of Texas Greensand per 1000SQFT to add irons and others to the soil. Ithelped green his SA lawn up signficantly. He used to think it was worthless but experimented with it anyway and he was wrong. He had 30 years in turf management. You can get them cheap at Lowes if they have them in your location. You can get compost tea and apply once a month to increase microbes populations. They are dirt cheap compared to real compost. Try that BUT provide corn meal or other protein based grains to feed them or they’ll die off.

4) Cutting too low. That is very very common. They cut them like they’re cutting bermuda which is a big no no. They perform better when cut at 3 inches MINIMUM. Bermuda is the opposite, they peform better at 1 inch but that proved to be a big hassle for most homeowners because their lawn is not level enough and they scalp them everywhere! I had that problem too so I keep it at 1.5 or 2 inches.

About zoysiagrasses, you can go with them if you can afford them! My suggestion is to go with coarse blade ones like Palasides which is highly rated and keep cutting hieght around 2-3 inches. I’ve heard good things about Empire but not much testing done on that in Texas to see if it does well. Talk to your local extenstion and see which zoysia variety does best. There are several dozen varities of zoysia! Palisade would be my #1 choice.

Stay away from bermuda. Too much work to get it looking nice and keeping them away from flower beds, etc. Very invasive. The gardners call them ‘Devil’ grasses. SA is much easier to control since they don’t spread underground like Bermuda.