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draz1711

2 week old Zoysia palisades sod - Brown spots

Draz1711
9 years ago

I am a complete newbie at lawn maintainence and need your expert advice.

I got zoysia palisades installed in my backyard ( appx 2200 sq feet ) and was reasonalble green when installed.

Now after 2 weeks i see some brown spots along the Fences and some areas in the center of the lawn.

I have been watering daily with sprinkler system being used twice a week.

Should i use Scotts Starter Food for new sods ?

Will that help renew the brown spots ?

Please help!

Comments (2)

  • apundt-tx
    9 years ago

    Its probably in shock since its roots were severed at the farm. This is usually normal. Gently lift a few pieces of green and brown squares and see if there are new roots growing and how much soil moisture is there.

  • dchall_san_antonio
    9 years ago

    If and when you cannot lift the sod from the ground, you need to cut way back on watering. Your sentence about water needs more explanation, but new sod should be watered lightly 3x per day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner time. Once the sod roots have knit to the ground underneath, then cut the watering in half. Start by going to every other day with 2x to 3x per day. A week later cut to once every 2 days but water a little longer to get the water deeper into the soil. Ideally by summer you should be watering once per week and applying a full inch at a time. That regimen should work even under most watering restrictions.

    Zoysia has a problem with recovery from injury. Here in San Antonio we had a lot of rain in the spring of 2013. Some of the zoysia lawns got a disease which browned it in some spots. Those spots never recovered in 2013. I'm watching them and expect to see them recover fully by next week. But that is the sort of poor performance which chases 90% of Texas zoysia owners away from that and back to St Augustine. These two hold-out zoysia owners are sitting in multi million dollar homes, so if they can't have excellent zoysia lawns, I doubt if anyone can.

    Here's what I expect to see in your lawn. Those brown spots will remain brown until the brown pieces break off and fall onto the soil below. Then they will turn gray as they decompost but no new grass will fill in. You may or may not have common bermuda grass trying to get a start in there. If it does, then you will forever have a mix of zoysia and bermuda.

    If you had this lawn installed, get them back out there and insist that the brown sod be replaced with green. They will, in turn, insist back that the grass will recover. Well, that depends on what your definition of recover is, because it will recover...by April of 2015, but not before. And you can't know what will happen to the spots between now and then.