Post Drought Recovery
Many of the service calls in the past couple of weeks are from customers concerned about brown areas of their St Augustine lawns - they see brown irregular areas of the lawn surrounded by greener St Augustine grass. They logically assume that since the other parts of the lawn are green, something must be attacking the brown areas. The sad truth is those brown areas were killed by the recent drought and draconian one-time-per-week water restrictions.
How It Happens
First, your lawn is not uniform - shade, open sun, good soil, poor soil areas, etc. respond differently to water stress. Some areas survive, some areas are damaged to various degrees, and some areas die.
At the end of the drought, rain, and irrigation reduce the water stress, surviving areas return to their natural beauty and damaged areas are in various stages of recovery. But what is dead is dead – it will not recover.
After weeks of rain, it is the dead areas surrounded by recovered green grass that raises the question “What is going on with the brown areas?” Forgive my bluntness, but what is dead, is dead and will not turn green no matter how much water you put on it.
The cause was the drought and water restrictions. The drought was bad enough – that alone would have destroyed lawns. But to enforce draconian water restrictions on self-supplied irrigation (Irrigation supplied by reclaimed, well, or surface water) insured acres of the urban turf would be destroyed
The Solution
Dead areas will have to be removed and replaced with sod or you can wait as surrounding surviving areas repopulate the area.
Remove and replace is what it sounds like – remove the dead grass and replace it with sod.
Waiting for the surrounding areas to repopulate takes time. St Augustine will spread 8” to 10” in a growing season (February – October). For example: a dead spot 20” in diameter and surrounded by healthy grass will repopulate in one growing season. The addition of plugs will help speed the process.
Note: Do not remove the dead grass when repopulating from surrounding areas. The dead grass acts like a mulch keeping the soil cool and moist. Weeds may invade the area before the St Augustine spreads. The weeds will not stop the St Augustine from spreading and soon, with a little TLC, you will have more St Augustine and fewer weeds.
Turf Tip –Do not turn off your irrigation during the rainy season – it never rains consistently enough to keep your lawn alive. Irrigation is mandatory, and rain supplements irrigation.
