Are you having trouble getting back your lawn filled with St. Augustine grass? Fret not, as I bring you all the information you’d need to take care of your St. Augustine Grass and ways you can stop it from its sufferings next time.
But first, let’s know about this exquisite grass. St. Augustine grass is very popular on the Gulf coast for its unique color. It has a rich blue-green colored blade. Because of its high tolerance to heat, salt, and humidity, it’s really very popular around the tropical and coastal areas.
However, St. Augustine grass is the type that requires a lot of care if you want to grow it properly. So, if you are not taking proper care of your lawn after planting St. Augustine seeds, it might get patchy, thin, and brown, losing its brilliant blue-green color.
To give you a summary of this fact, if you want to get St. Augustine grass to grow back on your lawn, the easiest thing you can do is to water your lawn carefully and properly. Get rid of those pesky insects and improve your lawn soil quality.
By doing so, this grass will have balanced water as well as its temperature will be regulated nicely. Moreover, control the pests so that they can’t kill the grass and attack the grassroots.
How to Get Back St. Augustine Grass
Now comes the most important part of this article! You can revive St. Augustine grass within 5 weeks depending on what kind of problem it’s facing. So here are the 5 steps which can help you get your St. Augustine back.
A. Watering Your Lawn is the First and Foremost Step
St. Augustine needs a high maintenance. Of course, that includes watering it regularly. Because if you don’t, they might start to dry out in the weather that is too dry, that too for an extended period. If you really want your St. Augustine to bloom brightly, you should water it at least thrice a week.
Watering your lawn randomly won’t work if you’re thinking about it. So, what should you do about it? Did you know that, if you want to keep your St. Augustine healthy, you need to keep it in three-fourths of an inch of water for like twice a week? So, water them adequately to get them back if they’re dry already. And if you want to bring it back to life, you’d need more water than this. It’s about 1 and a half an inches full of water every week.
However, there’s a limit to it though. If your lawn grass is totally dead due to water shortage or drought, you might not be able to get it back. So, get to work immediately before the time’s over.
Appropriate Amount to Water
All your hard work will be for nothing if you don’t follow the appropriate method of watering the St. Augustine grass on your lawn. At first, you should try watering enough water on the dead grass so that the roots might reach the roots.
If you follow this procedure, the grass might come back to life if it has rhizomes deeper in the soil. Now you may ask what are rhizomes. It’s basically a type of root that creeps deeper into the soil. So, water the grass adequately if you want to get your St. Augustine back within about 3 to 4 weeks.
However, if your grass is dead and you left it alone for over 5 weeks, then that’s it for the grass. It’s impossible to get it back then. The maximum you can get the grass back which has been in that state for at most 1 to 3 weeks. Any more than that, it’s over!
B. Soil Quality is Also an Important Step!
St. Augustine grass might also die if the soil on your lawn is not appropriate for it to sustain. Now, what kind of soil is appropriate for this grass? That is, St. Augustine grows well in well-aerated soil. So, if you see that the top soil in your lawn got compacted, it’d be wise for you to start working on the soil of your lawn.
Steps to Improve Soil Quality
To improve the soil quality in your lawn, for St. Augustine grass, you need to follow the following steps:
Make sure your lawn has enough layers of effective soil so that the roots of the St. Augustine grass can dig deeper into the soil for more nutrition. Check for the soil composition if it has around 5% of organic matter. It’s a very important factor to get St. Augustine grass to grow back. To provide a nutritious medium, you need to alter the topsoil into a healthy perfectly nutritious soil to grow it back.Follow the proper tillage method to keep the top soil aerated. Pay attention to the level of clay soil as it sucks up more water than necessary leaving the grass with a lesser water amount. This is a very serious problem, especially during drought.
C. Dethatch Your Lawn Before it’s too Late
Sometimes, you might see a thick layer of thatch accumulating near the roots of St. Augustine grass. This thick thatch is very troublesome for the roots as they cause suffocation for the roots. The main problem with this is that it slowly cuts off the nutrition and water source for the roots. As a result, the grasses will die out before you know it.
Moreover, thick thatch is a very good place for insects and bacteria, and fungus to grow. So, thick thatches are not only causing food and water shortage for the roots but also making them prone to different kinds of diseases.
So, if you want to revive your St. Augustine grass, you should dethatch it as soon as possible. In addition to that, it’d be wise if you aerate the soil at the same time, preventing the suffocation that’s making your grass die.
D. Remove the Excess Salt if There’s Any
Fertilizer is a very powerful weapon for you if you want to grow St. Augustine grass on your lawn. It’s true that St. Augustine needs a lot of nutrition for growing well. It’s a given fact. However, did you know that if you don’t have the fertilization under control, it might be very easy for excess salts to break out on your lawn?
If you apply excess fertilizer to your lawn, it might look like it’s dying. In addition to that, the grasses will turn yellow and brown if you don’t do anything before it’s too late.
If your St. Augustine is dying from too much exposure to fertilizer, watering them is the appropriate way to deal with this. Now how does water help in this situation? Water flushes out excess nitrogenous salts from the lawn soil.
Apply a generous amount of water in the areas where you think you might’ve applied too much fertilizer. How’d you identify those areas? It’s easy, all you need to do is search out parts where the grasses have become brown. Doing it every day for a week should do the job!
Just be careful not to water too much as it might cause other problems such as overwashing the fertilizers, bacterial and fungal infections, discoloring of the grass, and redundant growth.
Here are the 2 things you absolutely need to make sure of if you want to get rid of the excess salt –
Water your lawn with water up to 1 inch per day. This will help the grasses to reduce the burn from excess fertilizer. Water your grass evenly. It might be difficult to follow because if you want to do it manually. So, it’s better if you use a water sprinkler.Applying excess fertilizer and leaving them as it does have much worse effects than you might realize. Worst cases might result in decreasing the productivity of your lawn soil. So, be careful as to how you deal with them.
E. Re-sow the Seeds on the Lawn
This step is the last resort if nothing works on St. Augustine on your lawn. As sad as it might be, if the grass dies permanently, it will start to form empty spots. If you uproot the dead grass, it will end up making the soil loose which you can say, is the appropriate situation for growing new ones.
However, you’d need to feed it and water it regularly so that it can have a healthy growth.
Final Words
Maintaining a lawn full of St. Augustine grass is not easy. I know they can be quite the handful if you want to keep them healthy. They just keep on dying at the slightest inconvenience. For this reason, I’ve piled up 5 steps that would help you get St. Augustine grass to grow back on your lawn.
Be sure to identify and follow each and every step properly and then be rest assured, you’d have a lawn full of St. Augustine grass in no time at all!
