Recommendations for Low-Maintenance Grass Options in Baton Rouge

zoysia

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zoysia

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I love my zoysia in the backyard. It is thick, plush, green and easy to keep weeds out of. It does require more mowing than my centipede front lawn. To the point where i have to bag up a good bit of hay in the summer.

I think it's the best, but worth noting the effort to keep it cut

Yep zoysia kicks arse. You can cut it short or long but it does require regular mowing.

Empire zoysia seems to do great in S LA. It spreads super slow but it is a bully. It keeps fighting through seasonal weeds, this time of year when weeds change you can see how it has progressed. It thrives while the others go through cycles of completely dying back. Centipede, for instance is a weak little bitch grass, it spreads just fine, looks great and doesn’t need quite as much mowing, but it will shrivel up and die if it doesn’t rain for a few weeks (although centipede looks great with zoysia too so not a bad filler grass if you need to seed). St Aug has the same centipede problems but compounded. Bermuda IMO needs a bit more work, water and sun are less negotiable with it. Bahia isn’t terrible, until the seed heads emerge. Carpetgrass actually is pretty good stuff (I don’t like the broad leaf variety though), it loves to grow here and not picky about soil conditions.

Definitely sod it if it is a small area, plugging is your other option but if I was starting fresh I would sod, at least right around the house.