QuestionWow.... thanks for taking that much time to answer me. It is very much appreciated. I will have my soil inspected. As to your compost tea, I would like the recipe if you wouldn't mind.
Thanks again, I am going back to read it over.
Tom
-------------------------
Followup To
Question -
Hi,
Do you have any advice when it comes to St. Augustine Sod (used all over Florida). I am just dying out there in the heat EVERY DAY of my life. I believe all these chemicals and things are causing more harm. I have bugs, crab grass problems,spony areas where roots are on top and thin, weeds galors, sedge, you name it, I got it.
One expert he swears by sugar but I need more opinions and a common sense approach to this devil grass. It is seriously making me miss my life with my family... Help someone please!!
Answer -
Tom, I was going to click the "sorry I can't answer that" box here on my computer screen until I read your question. If anyone ever deserved a little help here, it would be you.
I have to begin by reminding you I am only the Long Island Gardener, thousands of miles NORTH of Florida, and I am really not an expert on growing grass in the Orange State.
But I will give this my best shot. Just make sure you find someone who can maybe agree with some of the things I am going to tell you.
First of all, your St. August Sod problem is really a textbook case of grass that has been cared for, with the best of intentions, and the greatest of ease, using things like Weed N Feed - Weed B Gone - Scotts 5(?) Step Grass Program - Roundup - Grub Killers - Fungus Killers - Weed Killers etc. You get the picture.
The heat of course I cannot help you with. Just remember this is the other side of the coin - we had cold weather like you would not believe this past decade, snow like there's no tomorrow, I could not wait for summer and I ain't looking forward to winter 2006. But I suppose with year round grass-growing, you are subject to exposure to year-round fumes from the chemicals that you (or someone else) apply. Which is awful.
Sugar is a user-friendly solution that so far does not appear to have any real use as far as correction of soil trouble. And you have those in spades.
The problem sounds to me like you are not taking care of your soil.
The basis of all healthy plants, including grass, is the soil they are growing in. Healthy plants don't get sick. Healthy grass does not get sick, either.
Good soil is the basis of the Nitrogen cycle. Unless your cultivating Mushrooms or Molds, this is going to be your bottom line. That's why things like Compost and Organic Fertilizers like Bone Meal are so healthy. They contribute to the soil. There's microbial life in the soil. The best grass money can buy, the prettiest grass in the prettiest lawn, needs great soil.
When you add, say, a Fungicide - something to kill a Fungus in your grass - you are wiping out a lot more things than the bad Fungus. There is, as they say in Iraq, a lot of collateral damage. You my friend are part of that collateral damage. So are all the beneficial fungi in your lawn.
Beneficial fungi?
Yep. All the stuff in the dirt - it's part of Nature's balance.
Take a wet towel. Now, you haven't been spraying Fungicide all over your house to avoid Mildew in the towels, have you?
Of course not!
Because you know that to get Mildew in a wet towel, you need DARKNESS and you need MOISTURE.
The people at Scotts, they would like to sell you Fungicides for all the Mildew all over your house. They don't care if you need it or not. They'll just be happy if they get you to buy it. They'll even dress it up in a beautiful container, and give it a sweet name like "Nice n Clean". But any intelligent American knows that you don't need Nice n Clean to get the mildew out of your house - even though Mildew spores are EVERYWHERE, in the air, on the floor, in the laundry room. Mildew needs certain things to grow. If you get it, the first thing you do is DRY the towel and HANG IT UP outside on a clothesline to give it sun. Right?
Same thing for your lawn.
Scotts makes incredible profits selling things that no one needs.
Your soil is filled with fungus spores ALL THE TIME. My lawn is, too. Fungus is EVERYWHERE. But you don't get it if you have a balance in your soil. And your soil balances itself - until you add Weed N Feed etc. Then - CRASH! And you have wiped out a major building block with something named Scotts.
I guess you can tell I do not hold Stock in the Scotts Companies.
If I did, though, I would not use it anyway.
Your St Augustine Grass needs to WITHDRAW from the chemicals you are putting on your grass. This is what I think you should do:
1. Keep mowing. Mow it faithfully, as often as you should mow.
My favorite retailer, Seedland (www.seedland.com), has this to say about St Augustine grass: "Mowing of heat stressed grass in the middle of the day only promotes more loss of moisture and nutrients unless watering systems are used shortly afterward.
"Warm season grasses con withstand the shorter mowing if done on a regular schedule and actually respond by better root development and thicker foliage."
The Better Lawn and Turf Institute(www.turfgrasssod.org/lawninstitute/southern_lawns.htm) recommends a mowing height of at least 2 in in sun, or 2 1/2 to 3 in in less sunny parts of your lawn.
2. Replace dead patches. The Better Lawn Institute advises all St Augustine plantings should be done in summer - now! - when temps are above 65 degrees. So if you have any brown spots you want to fix, now's the time to do it.
I see St Augustine is ONLY available as plugs or sod, not as grass, according to Seedland, which I mention because they have a lot of care-and-feeding instructions for different grass around the country. And St Augustine is on sale right now.
3. Get a Soil Analysis. The USDA website
(www.csrees.usda.gov/qlinks/partners/state_partners.html) posts a map that you can just click on to find out where your Coop. Extension is. Find out what your soil has and what it doesn't. This is the ONLY way you will be able to make intelligent decisions about your soil - and your St Augustine Grass. It is a pain in the neck, it is the step people skip, and it is really a SHORTCUT to great soil and perfect grass.
4. In the meantime, learn how to make something called Compost Tea.
I know, this sounds like one of those granola-brain marijuana-growing flakeout whacko "tea" concotions dreamed up on the West Coast, or by Timothy Leary. Trust me. This is the best thing you can put on your lawn. Apply it in the dark when no one's looking. Make sure no one is walking the dog when you sprinkle it around. This is great stuff. Let me know if you need a recipe. It takes a few weeks and you can do it while you're waiting for your soil analysis to come back.
This sounds like a lot of work. It is just a foundation, so that you can do the right things for your lawn and yourself. Apply the Compost Tea and you are putting down microscopic flora and fauna that you wiped out for years with lawn care products. They have to go in there. God willing, you don't have enough residual chemicals to keep them from growing any more.
This is a long, long, long answer even for me, Tom. Especially given that I didn't think I had anything valuable to say to a St Augustine Lawngrower.
But this is a key to your future lawn.
After you soil analysis comes back, read the recommendation on soil additives. This is stuff you only put down ONCE. Every once in a while, you put something else down. Benign neglect - the lawn grows itself. Just water carefully, and don't do anything crazy.
Some final words on your Devil Grass, which I hear about from time to time and can tell you plenty about, none of it good:
Devil Grass is "Cynodon dactylon" -- called Couch Grass or Bermuda Grass in my neck of the woods. The Weed From Hell.
Some Southern neighborhoods cultivate lawns out of this. It is the most common, and best performing, grass in Arizona. Not surprisingly, at one time Devil Grass was considered the leading cause of hay fever there.
In Bermuda, it is one of the most rampant, invasive species ever known. They feed it to cows in India; it is the first green plant to show up after a brush fire in Africa; and it's great for football fields because you can run all over it and nothing will happen. Nothing.
In other words, Tom, I feel your pain.
Home Depot sells mats of weed cover. It's a black fabric-like roll of special material. This lets air and water and fertilizer go through the mat -- so you can water and fertilize just like you always do. THE BEST THING about this stuff is that NOTHING can grow UP from underneath. Cover the mat with mulch to keep it down. It will keep weeds from growing around your beloved Roses and will look very nice when it's set up.
I get the impression that Devils Grass spreads all over the place. So I expect it would spread out from under the weed cover. And I do mean this stuff spreads like a house on fire, very far. You can read more about it at Blue Planet (www.blueplanetbiomes.org/bermuda_grass.htm).
You need a physical barrier around the perimeter of the fabric drop -- a deeply set barrier to prevent the roots from creeping all the way under the fabric to the end, and taking over your entire yard. Which they will probably do.
Ask your Horticultural Extension Service what they recommend. I am absolutely sure they get this question all the time.
Because it's such a nuisance, there are laboratories all over the world working on how to get rid of it. The earth-friendly Nature Conservancy funds a website where researchers can contribute their findings on control and management of this weed (tncweeds.ucdavis.edu/esadocs/documnts/cynodac.html).
They note: "Cynodon dactylon needs direct sunlight in order to grow and dies out with increased levels of shade. This characteristic can be utilized in the control."
To block sun from Devil Grass, sheets of black plastic might be effective, as well as the landscape cover mentioned earlier. In your lawn, I am not sure if it is a practical option, since once removed the weed might return. Once established, only a permanent cover will halt its progression. Sorry - trying to be helpful here, but not being very good at that.
At the California Dept of Food and Agriculture (www.cdfa.ca.gov/phpps/ipc/weedinfo/cynodon.htm), scientists have this to say about Devil Grass: "Persistent hand removal of rhizomes and stolons can eliminate bermudagrass from small areas. Tilling or discing as needed to expose rhizomes to sun-drying or freezing temperatures, or summer solarization in moist soil for 6 weeks can control infestations."
How one exposes grass to freezing temperatures in Florida is anyone's guess. But then they are working on this in California, where anything is possible.
To continue on one of my less favorite remedies: "Systemic herbicide is most effective when applied to non-water-stressed plants after flowering in summer to mid-fall, before plants go dormant."
They also maintain that mowing at 2-3 inches keeps Devil Grass from spreading into your lawn. Of course it is too late to do that now.
Cleaning a lawnmower after mowing a lawn infested with Devil Grass prevents dispersal of those scary rhizomes and stolons, which multiply like space aliens.
Certain concentrations of Glyphosphate - the main ingredient in Roundup - is used in experiments conducted in Madagascar to control this weed in sugar fields; the report is posted on the internet (agroecologie.cirad.fr/pdf/Poster_Cynodon_Nairobi_2005.pdf#search='Cynodon%20dactylon%20systemic%20control'). Note the references to "improving soil structure" on farms - the educated man's way to solving lawn problems.
So to use a popular political expression, we will have to Wait And See what Develops in the war against Devil Grass. Right now, there are some basic steps you can take.
Looks like you're going to be a very busy Floridian. I hope the weather works with you in the next few weeks.
Lots of stuff here - let me know if you need clarification on anything. Up here on LI, I hope to hear good news from you again soon. Thanks for writing and good luck with your grass project.
AnswerMy friend, I admire your nerves of steel and forward thinking attitude. It isn't often we find people who have learned to do things a certain way who are able to switch gears this quickly.
To give you a little explanation, compost tea is a concentrated cocktail of beneficial microbes.
These microbes control fungus diseases among other things and determine basically whether or not your soil, and the things you grow there, is going to be healthy.
When nieve people pour bug killers and weed killers on their grass, they think they are simply poisoning the bugs or fungus that are making their grass sick. It's a maintenance activity for them. Something you would do just like you wash dishes, or paint the house.
They're wrong.
After wiping out all signs of life, opportunistic organisms - bad bugs, bad fungi, diseases, even bad plants - move in and take over. More chemicals are needed. The cycle continues and you become "addicted" (for lack of a better way of putting it) to the chemicals. Eventually something goes wrong and there is no cure. Meanwhile,
dogs and cats, children and birds and squirrels are running all over that grass, bringing the chemicals indoors; people are mowing it, breathing it as they go; genes and DNA everywhere go haywire, weird diseases follow, and no one knows why.
Compost tea will instantly fix that.
The cutting edge recipe on this matter in the scientific community is AERATED compost tea. When you're finished with the basic recipe, you use an air pump and airstone - he kind you get from the aquarium supply store - to shoot air through a 5-gal. bucket of tea. This generates tons of Oxygen to energize the aerobic microorganisms in the tea, which fluorish and multiply.
Traditional recipes did not have access to airstones, so this can be done the old fashioned way very effectively. It's just that the final product will just have more aerobic bacteria if you use an airstone. Also, depending on how saturated your soil is with chemicals, and how inhospitable it is to the microorganisms in the Tea, you may have to rely on several applications over time to get the desired effect.
Finally, remember that your neighbors are probably going to think you have lost all your marbles. Best to do this when no one is looking. Since the proof is in the pudding, you'll need the pudding to prove you really are on to something.
COMPOST TEA:
DIRECTIONS: Put 1 shovel of HIGH QUALITY compost in a 5-gallon bucket of water.
(Optional: Alfalfa pellets or some other cattle feed.)
Let 'tea' sit for a week, stirring daily. Rumor has it that if you add 2-3 tblsp molasses, brown sugar, corn syrup or another simple sugar -- 1 Tablespoon per 3 days of aerobic brewing -- you will create a superior fungicidal tea. (Molasses also contains sulfur which is a mild natural
fungicide.)
Sugar products are mostly carbon, which is what the micropopulation devour. You want to make sure the sugar has been eaten and digested before you apply the tea the soil and to keep the aerobic bacteria strong while brewing process.
(Yes, this is one of those situations where Sugar can be your garden's best friend. But sprinkling it straight on the grass, I think the effect if any would be negligible. You can try an experiment and not treat one part of the grass and watch the results. But it sounds like you already have enough to do.)
To this you can add a few cups of:
1. fruit,
2. corn meal,
3. Epsom salts,
4. green weeds,
5. a can of fish,
7. garden or woods soil,
8. apple cider vinegar (1-2 Tablespoons only),
9. alfalfa meal.
Stirring occasionally will also add Oxygen to the extent you stand there stirring. Eggbeaters are good too.
The tea is ready when a foamy layer appears on the surface. Apply straight or diluted. This formula is the best possible fertilizer you can put on your lawn -- or your garden.
Good luck, Tom. Happy Labor Day. I guess you will be doing a lot of labor.
