When to repair gopher damage

acanfield – posted 13 September 2007 18:38

I put St Augustine in my backyard (500 sq ft) this June, and much to my horror, a portion of it just got damaged by a gopher, who I believe (based on the past two days) is finally in gopher hell.

I live in So. Calif., and I am wondering if it is too late in the season to repair the damaged area with St. Augustine plugs. Or should I just wait until Spring?

Since it is a warm-season grass, and the warm-season is almost over, I’m not sure what to do. If I do nothing, will the bare areas eventually self-repair when the grass starts growing in the spring? Or should I repair with plugs in the Spring?

Living in Southern California, the coldest it gets here is about 40 degrees. Will my St. Augustine grow at all during a mild winter like this to begin covering the bare areas?

Suggestions?

Thank you!

TexanOne – posted 18 September 2007 01:56

I don’t think you will make a mistake by going ahead and repairing the damage now. Even if it did get cold enough to cause the St Augustine to go into semi-dormancy, the roots will still be growing throughout the winter.

acanfield – posted 18 September 2007 09:52

What is the best way to repair St. Augustine?

I don’t know where to get plugs locally, so I bought a couple of flats of St. Augustine at Lowe’s.

Do I just rip off a strand of it with some roots, and plant in a little hole in the bare areas? Is there something I should do to prepare the soil in the bare spots (e.g. starter fertilizer, compost, planting mix, etc).

Thank you.

TexanOne – posted 18 September 2007 13:26

Normally, sod is pretty well bound together as a tight mat and you’ll cause some setback ripping out individual stolons (strands). It’s ok if you cut the sod into half or quarter pieces with something like a carpet knife to lay into bare spots as needed, but I would not tear out the stolons from the sod.

A better alternative is to determine how large an area you need to repair, scrape the damaged area down to the bare dirt, and then lay the sod intact over the bare dirt. Since St Augustine does not produce rhizomes (underground runners / strands), once you get down to bare dirt, you should be ready to patch in the new St Augustine sod.

One tip: before you patch in the new sod, I would recommend you really soak the area around the gopher hole. It is much more desirable to find out if the surface is going to cave-in somewhere now as opposed to later on when you have established St Augustine growing. Hopefully, the little sucker dug deep and this won’t be an issue for you!

acanfield – posted 20 September 2007 11:02

Not counting the gopher damage, I think the lawn in general has a problem.

When the lawn was new, it looked so lush and thick. This was in early July. It didn’t get its first haircut for 5 weeks. My landscaper was going to give the lawn the first cut, but he didn’t. So my gardener did it. It was so high, that he used a weed whacker the first time; the lawn mower couldn’t go high enough. He figured this out after he massacred one small section! He comes every other Friday, and subsequently has been using the mower on the lawn. But the poor lawn has been going downhill ever since it was cut for the first time.

Other important facts: I also have two active dogs. Despite giving them Green-Ums (supposedly neutralizes the nitrogen) the grass has brown spots. However, I do see green grass growing over the brown. So I know the dog urine, and dog traffic, definitely have a negative impact on the lawn, but for years I did manage to have a crummy Heinz 57 lawn that admittedly got worse since we bought this house in 1993 — due to tree roots running along the lawn surface. I removed this tree before the new St Augustine sod was laid.

Then the gopher did his thing on part of the lawn, which really messed up this section further, and one of the dogs dug into several of the gopher mounds. . . so I put up a temporary fence weeks ago to try to keep the dogs out of the gopher area, but they do occasionally ignore it. I also think there is some other animal helping with the digging. One morning there was a massive hole in the gopher area, but the dogs were locked in the house all that night and couldn’t have done it. What other critter could this be? Possum? Squirrel? Raccoon? Rat? I have seen rats and squirrels in the backyard.

I would like to attach some before and after photos, but can’t figure out how to do this.

I don’t know if part of problem is the sprinklers my landscaper put in. Due to low water pressure, he used MPRotator spray heads (http://www.mprotator.com/). These don’t have the output that normal sprinklers have, and he set up the timer to water just 10 minutes every day.

Then we had a prolonged heat wave in August, and I’m thinking this was inadequate watering. This week I changed the timer to water 30 minutes 4 days a week. The MP1000 output is about .4 inches per hour.

A couple of weeks ago I put just a little Scotts® Turf Builder® Lawn Fertilizer with 2% Iron on the lawn, thinking maybe it needed fertilizer. It definitely didn’t help; but don’t think it hurt too much. I didn’t see any effect actually.

I am at a total loss at what to do at this point to save the lawn. My expectation never was to have the perfect lawn, because I accept that my dogs will prevent that. However, between the gopher, and whatever else may be going on, the lawn really looks like shit now.

I just don’t know what would be the best thing to do to try to improve its condition. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get my landscaper to come back and assess the situation so I plan to ask my gardener for his advice tomorrow (though I do feel his initial mowing of the lawn really started the downward spiral).

Sorry this is so long! I hope responses in this forum will help.

TexanOne – posted 21 September 2007 01:09

Well, from what you said this changes quite a few things for sure. Dogs can tear up any lawn, but St Augustine should be one of the toughest lawns for wear and tear when it comes to dogs. My medium-sized, active dog has been unable to tear up my St Augustine for several years. There are all kinds of recommendations about controlling urine damage – from giving a dog tomato juice to pills, but I don’t know much about that.

I don’t know what critter is messing up the lawn. I lived in San Diego several years ago and gophers were the worst. I never knew of any other varmint that would damage a lawn in Southern California, so I am not sure there. Rats and squirrels usually do not dig or damage a lawn except squirrels like to dig small holes to bury nuts and acorns. Maybe a mole, but I never saw a mole in SoCal?

As far as the MP Rotators go, I converted my sprinkler system from a Toro 570 fixed spray system to MP Rotators three years ago and couldn’t be happier with the performance. However, MP Rotators do apply water much more slowly than a standard spray system so longer run times are definitely in order. I would recommend you do an irrigation audit, but run times of 30 to 50 minutes every 3 to 5 days would much more realistic for MP Rotators. The goal is to water deeply and infrequently. If you are watering 10 minutes everyday, I would think the roots of the St Augustine are very shallow because they are only going to grow where they can find water – which in your case is probably in the top inch or two of soil.

Also, cutting St Augustine short when it is tall will really damage it as will most any grass. St Augustine is really sensitive to low cutting – keep it at 3” or higher at the lowest.

Overall, St Augustine is really one of the easiest lawns to care for. It is not the perfect grass by any means, but it is tough and fairly easy to care for. It is surely easier to care for than most other lawn species in the southern USA. I would say to continue feeding it 4x / year, water deeply and infrequently to get the roots down lower, and have it mowed at least 1 / week at 3” and it should respond well.

acanfield – posted 21 September 2007 08:55

Thanks for the encouragement. Yesterday I came home from work and caught the dogs “in the act” of digging! So these partners in crime are at least partly (maybe totally) responsible for the holes.

I think they smell the dead gopher and are trying to find it. After my initial shock, I realized the holes are not very big horizontally, but they are amazingly deep. And the amount of dirt displaced in no way refills the holes — I think these two adjacent holes intersect a tunnel. They didn’t find the gopher — yet. I wonder how to keep them from continuing their quest. Also, I am concerned they will dig and find the poison pellets buried in the tunnel.

I will have to find a less flimsy temporary fence to surround the gopher area. What have you done in the past to keep your dog from digging for dead gophers? Are there any repellents that work? I tried cayenne pepper sprinkled on the lawn to see if I could keep them from urinating on the lawn, and that didn’t phase them at all.

Those dogs are sure lucky that I adore them so much!

By irrigation audit do you mean spacing some cups across the lawn to see how much water is in them after a given period of time?

Thanks for helping

acanfield – posted 02 November 2008 14:04

Thanks for the encouragement. Yesterday I came home from work and caught the dogs “in the act” of digging! So these partners in crime are at least partly (maybe totally) responsible for the holes.

I think they smell the dead gopher and are trying to find it. After my initial shock, I realized the holes are not very big horizontally, but they are amazingly deep. And the amount of dirt displaced in no way refills the holes — I think these two adjacent holes intersect a tunnel. They didn’t find the gopher — yet. I wonder how to keep them from continuing their quest. Also, I am concerned they will dig and find the poison pellets buried in the tunnel.

I will have to find a less flimsy temporary fence to surround the gopher area. What have you done in the past to keep your dog from digging for dead gophers? Are there any repellents that work? I tried cayenne pepper sprinkled on the lawn to see if I could keep them from urinating on the lawn, and that didn’t phase them at all.

Those dogs are sure lucky that I adore them so much!

By irrigation audit do you mean spacing some cups across the lawn to see how much water is in them after a given period of time?

Thanks for helping

acanfield – posted 21 July 2012 12:43

Thanks for the encouragement. Yesterday I came home from work and caught the dogs “in the act” of digging! So these partners in crime are at least partly (maybe totally) responsible for the holes.

I think they smell the dead gopher and are trying to find it. After my initial shock, I realized the holes are not very big horizontally, but they are amazingly deep. And the amount of dirt displaced in no way refills the holes — I think these two adjacent holes intersect a tunnel. They didn’t find the gopher — yet. I wonder how to keep them from continuing their quest. Also, I am concerned they will dig and find the poison pellets buried in the tunnel.

I will have to find a less flimsy temporary fence to surround the gopher area. What have you done in the past to keep your dog from digging for dead gophers? Are there any repellents that work? I tried cayenne pepper sprinkled on the lawn to see if I could keep them from urinating on the lawn, and that didn’t phase them at all.

Those dogs are sure lucky that I adore them so much!

By irrigation audit do you mean spacing some cups across the lawn to see how much water is in them after a given period of time?

Thanks for helping