My front yard is in trouble. There are large brown patches where some thing has eaten my grass down to the roots. It is so dead. I am not sure what to do. My mom thinks it could be grub worms, a lady at the local hardware store said chinch bugs. . .
As well, I need to fertilize before the fall really comes in.
Any and all help is requested.
Thanks,
Melissa
St Augustine Grass needs help fast
It could be bugs or a fungus. Here is a great link from TAMU http://theurbanrancher.tamu.edu/bugs/l1766.pdf
Thank you so much. I read the article and my DH will bring the Spectracide home this evening.
It could be chinch bugs or take-all patch (a fungus). So before you buy the Spectracide, you really need to know which it is. Chinch bugs like it hot and dry and damage is usually seen near an area which has reflective heating - like a driveway, street, wall of a house, etc. You can check it out by cutting out both ends of a can - like a 1# coffee can - and pounding one of the ends about an inch into the area of your grass where the brown meets the green (where the chinch bugs would be feeding). Now fill it part way up with water and add a little dish soap. Watch for floating chinch bugs. Take-all patch kills the grass, stolons and roots. It is very common. If you can take a sample in to your local Extension Office, they can look under their microscope for the telltale fungal strands. Treatment for take-all is Immunox. Good luck. I have both! (My poison of choice for the chinch bugs is pyrethrin.)
Ceejay, I read somewhere that peat moss works for the take all patch, and one site recommended corn meal(the plain kind, not self rising).
Take-all tends to prefer conditons on the alkaline side, and acidifying the lawn is often recommended - if you have take-all. However, this is always done in conjunction with a fungicide. I sure would like to know if any tests have been done. Have you any information? I haven't heard of corn for take-all. I've heard of corn meal being used as a pre-emergent - to keep weeds from germinating. That seems to be effective.
It was turfgrass.com, he recommends cornmeal for all fungus treatment. He said it feeds the microbes in the soil that kill the fungus. Dirtdoctor.com(Howard Garrett, a radio organic gardening talk show host) also recommends cornmeal for fungus. Beorganic.com is another site that recommends cornmeal.
Take-all can be cured with peat moss alone, no fungicide needed. That is from Texas A&M website and Bryan College says this:
"Take-all-patch is a menacing fungal disease. Irregular patches of grass turn yellow and finally brown in early and midsummer. Grass thins, but enough usually is left to achieve coverage the following season. Locally available fungicides don’t work. Research done in Dallas shows that spreading a thin film of dried and baled Canadian peat moss over the affected areas works best."
Here is a link about St Augustine fungal problems(there are a bunch of them)
http://www.theeagle.com/homegarden/080604horne.php
Wow. I appreciate the responses and will begin my research. I know I am really hating this thing. My yard was in really good shape until about August or so. It seemed as one day it was good and the next day it was on its way to bad.
Thanks again, and I will give an update.
On the subject of cornmeal being a pre-emergent, it is actually cornmeal gluten that is the pre-emergent. How they seperate the gluten from the cornmeal I don't know. I use cornmeal around my roses and under my oak trees for fungus prevention and there is apparently not enough gluten in it to be a problem as I have no shortage of weeds. The gluten does work against weed seeds but I heard that it has to be dry in order to work. So if you've had a lot of rain you have to reapply.
Well, I do have chinch bugs. I purchased the chemicals to rid myself of these nasty creatures.
I went to turfgrass.com and A&M site. Both were very helpful.
Is it OK to fertilize and b/c I have used the spectracide, is there any special sort of fertilizer I should buy?
Thanks for the help.
Melissa
In your area a 3-1-2 ratio fertilizer is recommended. That would translate to a 15-5-10 or 12-4-8 or such..... You can use it both spring and fall. It is OK to fertilize now, even having used the Spectracide. Mid-October is a good time in our area. Don't (ever) use a weed and feed!
Ceejay, Scotts makes a special weed and feed for St Augustine. I used it last year when I needed to get rid of burr clover in my grass(I have Floratam, an improved St Aug). I was pleased with the results.
The problem with Scott's Weed 'n Feed is that it is taken up by the root system of trees and shrubs, which will eventually kill them. Works great on St Augustine(although you shouldn't be applying the pre-emergant at the time of year that you fertilize) but does a number on other things. Since you are on Dave's Garden I will presume that you have other things. When you see their commercial on television, note that it is a big lawn, with no trees or shrubs. You can call them at the phone number on the sack, and they will admit that it is harmful to other plants.
Oh yes!! you're absolutely right. DO NOT get the weed n feed in the dripline of your big trees. My yard is 1.6 acres, the burr clover was out in the open and we were VERY careful not to get the weed-n-feed in the flowerbeds.
We fertilize in March and September and it was March when we used the weed stuff, the burr clover has nasty burrs if allowed to set seed. They reseed like mad but are only a problem in the spring. They go dormant in the heat.
Now if I could find something to kill the burr grass. It's a native grass, soft soft blades but nasty sticker balls for seed pods! I hate getting those between my toes! I have to be careful when we're working and the house is in a new development that hasn't been sodded. The burr grass is everywhere and sticks to everything. Those burrs hurt my fingers trying to untangle them from my shoelaces or clothing.
Did some research today. Here's what I found: According to Dr Jerry Parsons, Professor at TAMU and TCE Horticulturist in South Central Texas "The ONLY (his caps) organic solution which is effective on lawn diseases is the sphagnum peat for Take-All Patch. Sphagnum peat is not effective against Brown Patch. Lately there have been claims made that corn meal and a garlic extract is effective. This is abolutely false. Even if these purveyors claim that a University tested and/or recommend the product." (...more) This is from http://bexar-tx.tamu.edu/ and is from an article dated Sept 18 2005 in the San Antonio Express News. It is a very interesting article about caring for "brown spots in the lawn" - IOW fungus problems. (He highly recommends Floratam St Augustine in this article.) His article on Take-All is at http://www.plantanswers.com/root_rot_fungus.htm. He recommends some fungicides too - one of which is Spectacide Immunox. I remember when Take-All made its appearance a few years ago. There wasn't anything out there to treat it with. Then Rubigan came out, but it was soooo very expensive. Like around $80 for a small container. Finally Bayleton and Immunox came along and the average homeowner could afford to treat.
Anyhoo - just thought I'd share what I found - for what it's worth.
We have Floratam and haven't had any problems with it.
I went to a house yesterday, his whole lawn was brown, just died. All the other lawns in the S/D were green. He had someone from a landscape company out looking at it, trying to figure out what happened. I'd never seen anything like it.