Issues with St Augustine

I had the same problem at my previous house except with centipede. I tried everything but what ultimately worked was buying some bags of Scotts lawn soil with the fertilizer already mixed in along with centipede seed. I mixed a LOT of seed into the soil real good then poured the soil over the bad spots and then put down one of those seed germination blankets to prevent erosion of the loose soil. Watered frequently and followed up with Scotts turf builder a couple weeks later. That finally solved the problem and I had a very thick and beautiful lawn.

A good likelihood it is brown patch (now called large patch) - conditions are favorable now for outbreaks and St Augustine is particularly susceptible. Here is a nice article from Clemson LINK.

Curious, does not part of the service you pay True Green for not include identification and treatment of such lawn issues?

quote:

---

Just my opinion. CrawDude will probably come around and tell you the truth

---

Might be related to thatch. Lawn diseases are not my strongest suite. Brown patch starts out as circular pattern which makes it easy to ID but as the Clemson article states in severe cases you’ll just see swaths of dead grass areas with no circular pattern evident as in the OPs photos.

Listened to local garden show this past weekend they stated they were seeing brown patch show up in the BTR area assoc with the cool, wet conditions of the past couple weeks, in fact the host said he had it in his St Augustine yard.

The LSU AgCenter does have a plant disease diagnostic lab that can ID from lawn samples LINK OP (I suspect your are in the BTR area?) send your photos to Dr Raj Singh with background info, he’ll will definitely be able to determine if it’s a lawn disease issue, if not from the photos from a lawn sample (fee assoc with a sample analysis). He sees this stuff daily.

Either way, is this not part of the service, to ID and treat lawn health issues, provided by TrueGreen?

I'm dealing with similar spots in my St. Augustine yard and have been watering to encourage new growth but recently read that watering makes it worse. It essentially encourages more of the fungus.

Report back with Rajs diagnosis. Neighbor across the street seems to be having the same problem.

quote:

---

Report back with Rajs diagnosis

---

I absolutely will

It is not chinch bugs. That is a full sun high heat bug. If your lawn greened up out of dormancy and then turned brown and died I would say it could be Take All Patch also known as Take All Root Rot. Look for black lesions in the runners.

On a side not about fertilizing and fungus. The older way of thinking about take all patch and large patch was that over fertilizing or fertilizing while the fungus is active would make it explode. I was at a conference in January and talked to Dr Chrissie Segars. She is a Clemson undergrad, LSU masters, and Texas A&M Dr in turf grass. The new research says that fertilizing while the fungus is active may help it recover faster.

Tarr doesn’t have a cure for the most part. You need to apply Azoxystrobin (heritage or Scott’s disease X) and peat moss. Tests were done use heritage, pest moss, propiconizole, and compost. The combo of heritage and peat moss showed the most promise. This disease is becoming more and more common in Dallas and it will wreck yards.

quote:

---

ronk

---

Thank you for taking the time to respond, and thank you so much for the information..... I'm thinking you might be right.

I have the service manager with Trugreen stopping by on Friday. It'll be interesting to see what he has to say.

Edit: what is the protocol for putting out the fungicide and the pete moss? Same time? Or each at different times?

quote:

---

Fungicide first water it in. Peat moss next

---

Is this a procedure that should be repeated over certain timeframes?

At what point could I expect to notice a "bounce back"

Sorry for all the questions, but I greatly appreciate you taking the time to respond