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PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2013 6:33 pm 
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I just bought a ,new construction, house in the DFW area, and one of my landscaping issues is with my lawn. I'm trying to figure out what this type of grass or weed this is. My whole yard is full of this and it would be nice to have a normal lawn. I need some tips on how to remove this from the rest of the grass without killing everything. The builder said that St Augustine was the type of sod laid down.

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PostPosted: Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:00 pm 
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Looks like regular bermuda grass going to seed.

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PostPosted: Sat Jun 22, 2013 10:43 am 
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It looks like it is now a 100% common bermuda lawn. It is probably a mix but from that angle it looks like a sea of shaggy bermuda seed stalks.

The reason it looks like that is you are mowing at the mower's lowest setting. Reset the mower to the highest setting and mow every other week. It will take several weeks for all the St Augustine to grow up tall enough to be clipped off by the mower, but once it is, the tall St Aug with the coarse blades will provide enough shade over the bermuda to choke it out. I have done this trick repeatedly over the years. In fact I am at the end of one of those cycles right now with my house in San Antonio. Back in 2010 we had so much rain that the St Aug died from disease. I dropped one flat of St Aug in the middle and today it is 99.9% St Aug. I have done this many times, so I know it works. In fact I used to play with the area next to where we park the cars. It used to be a mix of St Aug and bermuda. We would go a full year with only rainfall on it and let the bermuda take over. The next year I would baby the St Aug back an it would take over. But there was always some bermuda lying in wait at the adjacent flower beds. Several years ago we did some remodeling and that wiped out all the St Aug in that little area.

Other tricks to this if you have areas where you have 100% bermuda with no remaining St Augustine are these.
Do not water the bermuda, but baby the St Aug areas with water.
Do not fertilize the bermuda, but fertilize the heck out of the St Aug. Put more at the edges of the growth as it sends out runners. Bermuda will thin way out with no fertilizer.
Do not mow the bermuda short. It thins out when mowed too tall.

Eventually you will have all the St Augustine back and can go to a normal maintenance of once weekly watering and fertilizing as often as you like with organics (I like rabbit food alfalfa pellets). Always mow St Augustine at the mower's highest setting.

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