St.Augustine grass

intursa – posted 15 January 2002 08:38

I have a St. Augustine lawn, but the other day an area had a terrific traffic(dancing over it) and the grass the next day was dry.With the proper watering will the grass come back?

wdrake – posted 15 January 2002 09:58

It should recover in a few weeks. Unless the grass is completely gone the only other problem I see might be compaction. You can core aeriate to help with that.

George777 – posted 07 February 2002 18:42

Augustine turf has a low tolerace for traffic. It will take longer to recover then most warm grasses.

seed – posted 09 February 2002 11:45

intursa, the problem is wear, and depending on the severity, it may recover. Unlike some other grasses, St. Augustinegrass has no below ground stems, therefore above ground injury can have severe consequences. There may be more than leaf injury, because if the turf area was already dry, then the runners would have been brittle, and if soil the soil was dry and sandy, it would have had poor cohesion. That is, dry sandy soil doesn’t stick like moist soil, but is prone to slip around and cause more breakage to roots and runners.

At this point, overwatering can be just as damaging as underwatering, because the injured tissue is susceptible to massive fungus attack when it is too wet.

Therefore, water reasonably just to saturate the root zone, no more than once per day.

Phil