Lawn Care Tips: Growing St. Augustine Grass

Views: 27750 | Last Update: 2009-05-01
St. Augustine grass is a very good grass that is susceptible to insects and diseases. Grow St. Augustine grass with tips from a professional landscape in this free video on lawn care tips. View Video Transcript

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Bill Elzey

Video Transcript

I'm Bill Elzey with Showplace Lawns. How to nurture St. Augustine Grass. St. Augustine is a very good grass, a very good looking grass. But it's also very susceptible to insects and diseases. It also requires a lot of water, it's not very heat tolerant, and in some circles it's referred to as an invasive grass, because of how it grows with its runners. I will say that the runners system of how it grows is a good quality of this grass because it's easy to repair because of that, and you can get it growing because of those runners. A descent watering program, once every five days, if you can allow that, is a perfect watering plan. Water it at a very long time on that fifth day. When I say it, I mean, every sprinkler station, or wherever you set your hoes and sprinkler. Water it for a long period of time, but once every five days. If you're on a schedule of two days a week, water it a shorter amount the first day, and then water it longer on the second day, because you'll have a longer period of time between the second day, back to the first. A good fertilizer program of at least twice a year, spring and fall, and then sometimes early June is not a bad idea either to fertilize this grass. We had found that organically, that St. Augustine is a very good grass when treated that way. We treat it, you aerate it once in spring, every spring, the proper watering program as we've mentioned, to fertilize it with a organic fertilizer, we spray it with seaweed and molasses, we put a compost tea on it, we do some dry molasses applications with it, we do a weed control in the fall and winter with the corn gluten meal. These things really help to build this grass up, and give it what it needs to be drought tolerant, heat tolerant, and cold tolerant. When you mow it, be sure the blade on the mower is sharp, so that it seers that edge off, doesn't rip it. Cut it at a taller height. We usually cut it at about 3 1/2 inches, 3 1/2, sometimes 3 3/4 inches height. Because the taller it is, it will shade the root system for you, it won't dry out as fast. St. Augustine is a grass that's kind of like a good pet, or something that you're always having to do things for. And it's the kind of grass that if you realized, or if you know you want to have a good looking St. Augustine lawn, you need to make the commitment, and time and effort, to follow these things to do this, so that you can have a really good looking lawn.