Zoysia vs St Augustine pros/cons

Kumbaroo – posted 11 April 2014 11:12

I live in signal hill, california ( south LA coastal area)I’m very new to lawn maintenance, but have decent experience of vegetable garden/plant care.

I have a clean area with dirt that I’m trying to convert into soil, hopefully in a couple of weeks will be ready for sod.

The area is very shady ( 7-8 h of sun /day in the summer but only 3.5-4 in the winter, due to walls/fences) we do have cool humid nights but in summer during the day it goes into the upper 90’sI do have mid size dogs that will make me work extra hard to maintain this area

Which SOD will you advise?I’ve seen most people advocating for either St Augustine or zoysia el toro ( is zoysia el toro a bigger blade variety -more shade resistant- or are there sub-varieties from eltoro-zoysia that have bigger blades and other smaller blades?)

Could somebody explain pros/cons for st Augustine vs the bigger blade variety of zoysia?

Thanks for your help!

This forum is great

Kumbaroo – posted 17 April 2014 14:39

I’ve been looking around LA for el toro zoysia and it appears to be discontinued buy the main distributor and non of the 10 nurseries that my landscaper works with carries it anymore.

Any ideas?

Maybe it is being discontinued due to problems …..

Phil Busey – posted 11 January 2015 09:54

Here is a link to the University of California Cooperative Extension Service for Los Angeles County with some name and phone numbers of people who may be able to help you:http://celosangeles.ucanr.edu/Environmental_Horticulture/The link to the Center for Landscape and Urban Horticulture does not seem to work and parts of the web site such as newsletters appear to end in 2006.

3.5 to 4 hours of full direct sunlight per day should be adequate to grow zoysiagrass but it will not have much extra capacity to outgrow the damage of dogs. For your climate either zoysiagrass or St. Augustinegrass should be able to grow but there are different cultivars of each that will differ. For example, for St. Augustinegrass a dwarf cultivar may be more suitable for shade and more resistant to wear, which may be considerable. The biggest perceived downside for St. Augustinegrass in your climate is the question of water use, however in a shade environment water use will be reduced.

Among the cultivars of zoysiagrass, this 2003 publication lists some helpful information. Overall turfgrass quality in Table 2 on Page 8 showed that El Toro was second best among named cultivars, and had little weed activity. Table 1 on page 10 showed that El Toro was surpassed among vegetative cultivars by some others depending on whether the data was from UCR (University of California – Riverside, which would be more relevant to you) or national – Victoria, De Anza, Zorro, Zeon, and Emerald:https://agops.ucr.edu/turf/publications/ctc/ctc53_1234.pdfHere is also a fact sheet form UC – Davis:http://ipm.ucdavis.edu/TOOLS/TURF/TURFSPECIES/zoysia.html