st. augustine murder

davidfr – posted 25 August 2004 16:26

Help! My St. Augustine lawn was the most lush and beautiful green in the ‘hood here in Miami Beach, Florida. I started to see a few weeds so I bought a big bag of weed and feed at Home Depot and spinkled liberally and haphazardly on my lawn with a Dixie cup. Three days later almost the entire lawn was brownish yellow, dry and dead looking – except a few isolated islands of green where I missed with fertilizer. The mix is approximately 75% dead areas and 25 % living areas.

My questions:

1. The dead stuff is never growing back, is it?

2. To re-sod, my buddy says just kill with Round-Up and lay the new stuff on top. Is this appropriate, or is additional prep required?

3. Has the soil content been damaged by the single overfertilizing, and if so what can I do?

DuaneS – posted 27 August 2004 18:48

This happened to my lawn, too. See the post below, “St. Augustine is dead.”After a month and a half it is growing back well, although patchy. I also had a trophy lawn and became the laughing stock. In my case I did everything wrong after the “killing”. I stopped watering completely (had not watered that much before) and left the thatch (dead grass) for a while.St. Augustine (mine at least–Texas Common, I believe) is very resilient. Continue to water (helps to leach out the overdose of fertilizer), mow and do nothing else.I predict (I’m no expert but…) that within a month it will be growing quite well again.Good luck.PS In my case I think I will go for the “Round it Up”, regrade and resod solution. My lawn is small and very bumpy, and the original variety of St. Augustine which I have was not very shade tolerant (have a shady spot next to the house). I’d like to try Palmetto.

Stay calm, if you water, it will grow…

DuaneS – posted 27 August 2004 18:50

forgot to give you the “technical angle”.Here’s my weak attempt at being a turf expert:The fertilizer can be neutralized by lime, I understand. Also, a way to check if the grass will spring back up is to observe the stolons (above ground runners). If they are still plump (stiff) and green, there is a very good chance that the grass will come back. Mine are brown and dead…Take care