St. Augustine Grass Late Winter Maintenance 2011

St. Augustine Grass Late Winter Checklist

Video Notes:

Watching out for winter kill:

Looking at the stolons can tell you. The stolons are the running vine looking appendages of the grass. Even when the grass is brown, the stolons should be somewhat green which means the grass is probably healthy. If you tear open the stolon and it should have green inside. If the stolons are mushy and don’t have much green to them, that part of your yard might have died from the cold. Winter-kill usually shows up in patches or sections of the yard…based on soil moisture.

So, if you do have find you have winter kill, there are a couple of options to get your lawn looking good again. If the entire lawn hasn’t died out and there is healthy grass around the patch of winterkill, you can always wait for the grass to grow back over the dead area but it can be a long process. If you choose to go this route, leave the dead St. Augustine in place to help keep out weeds. You can encourage quicker growth by mowing the grass tighter.

Most don’t have the patience for that if it’s a larger area…so option 2 is to call your local grass company and re-sod that part of the lawn. The new grass will tack down and blend in quickly.