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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2014 2:28 pm 
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OK ... so my lawn is 2 years old. I am dealing with a "problem", part of which is probably that I am not identifying the plants (grass) properly.

So far my time in Texas (about 10 years), I have done so-so with lawns ... they would look and feel pretty good but there was always something. My new lawn has been been a lot of work because of the horrible prep work the builder did (basically a 1/2" of sand on top of the horrible frisco gumbo clay), but I noticed that it seems like the "good" grass is being replaced by the "bad". I think I have zoysia (good) and centipede (bad) ... to me the "good" stuff is the stuff that looks and feels like golf course grass : very thin blades that I cut about 1.5" to 2" (yes, I know I am supposed to let it get longer, I am new to Dirt Doctor). When you barefoot, it is very soft and cool. The 'bad' stuff grows on 'runners', and when it crowds out the good grass, it is a lot more course on your feet, bordering on crunchy. When they did the sod, there were whole pieces of the "bad" stuff here and there ... not a lot but enough to get me upset. Now, however, it seems to be spreading and overtaking the 'good' grass.

So ... question is : 1) does anybody know what these two types of grasses are? particularly the bad grass. and 2) can I stop / kill the bad grass?

Thanks!


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PostPosted: Sat May 24, 2014 1:13 pm 
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It looks like Bermuda (top) and St. Augustine (bottom, on runners, as you call them) to me. They are both commonplace as turf here and end up commingled when adjacent homeowners had different lawn grasses to start with. Go to the Library of Organic Information and look up Bermuda and St. Augustine, decide if you have more sun or shade, and see which one you want to encourage.

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PostPosted: Mon May 26, 2014 3:40 pm 
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Thanks for the reply: it is definitely not st Augustine, I probably should have put a coin in the picture for perspective. After further research, I am pretty convinced the 'bad' stuff is centipede grass. Now the questions are whether I can kill it or not, whether I can change the environment to give the good grass an advantage over the bad, or perhaps whether I can 'plant' some of the good stuff (either seeds or plugs) to overtake the centipede grass.


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PostPosted: Mon May 26, 2014 4:50 pm 
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Scroll down in this site to the grass comparison photo and see if it matches the stuff in your lawn.

Wikipedia

Aggie Horticulture

See if any of these help.

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PostPosted: Sun Jun 22, 2014 1:09 am 
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The good grass looks like hybrid bermuda and the bad stuff looks like common bermuda. You cannot get rid of one without getting rid of both. But if you need to, we call that tough love. Unfortunately I don't know of any organic methods that work.

You can mow hybrid bermuda down to 1 inch or much lower and it will look and feel like a professional putting green.

Is there any chance you have fescue or Kentucky bluegrass? There is something about the way it looks at the mowed tips that makes me think northern grass. But at the same time, it is very dense, unlike fescue.

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2014 6:56 pm 
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Looks like Zoysia in the middle photo. I have no experience with it in TX, but when I had it in Georgia, it would beat out the Bermuda but not choke it out completely. GA soils are acidic and my TX soil is a pH of 8 so comparison of the two cases isn't too useful.

Zoysia is a wonderful grass if you can successfully grow it.

My sod dealer near downtown Plano has plots of different types of grass. If you can go some place and see different grasses side by side, you'll probably immediately recognize what you have.

Also if the unknown grass is fully green in the winter that points to something like rye or fescue which will almost die off in our heat of July/Aug.


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