If you keep it moist (once a week deep watering at the most), it should be very drought resistant, too. If you are fertilizing with synthetic ferts, then apply after the initial spring flush of growth has stopped. Apply again on Labor Day and again later in the fall. Thanksgiving is when I do it but you are considerably farther north. You might try it around Halloween to set it up for winter. If you are using organic fertilizer, then apply about 3 weeks before your 'last frost' date, again on Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, and Halloween/Thanksgiving.

Just be sure to use good preventive maintenance by feeding, watering, and mowing practices.

Any suggestions on getting chipmunks to stop pulling up the plugs? Ive tried fox urine, but doesn't seem to be working.

Cold could be an issue depending on what part of TN you are in. Palmetto is one of the better cold tolerant varieties of SA, so there are very few varieties that can do better other than maybe a variety called Raleigh and Texas common. If you get a extended period of hard freezing weather where the ground freezes you will have a problem, but otherwise you should be OK. Best advice I can give you is if you know a good long cold snap is coming, soak the yard with water, and pray you get snow cover before the extreme cold hits. Worse thing is to have a dry hard freeze as the cold will reach deep into the soil and kill any warm weather grass if the roots freeze. My sod farm has made a lot of money the last two years off of folks in Dallas area with SA and Bermuda grass from the extreme winters of the past two seasons. If the ground is wet and snow covered the ground will not drop below freezing.

TW is right about keeping ground moist prior to hard freeze. That sure works very well for me and I have Floratam and Sapphire cultivars that are not supposed to be super cold tolerant type and past two years were the coldest years I've seen at my house. Both are not recommended for growing in my area.

Lou I remember you saying this some time ago, but I am not totally surprised as Floritam, Floralawn, and Raleigh are the only SAD varieties known to be SAD resistant.

But I do have a question for you, but you do not have to answer because it is asked so you can better understand what I think happened. Was the Palmetto finally killed off after a cold winter? Have you used a lawn mowing service?

OK here is what I am thinking. If your Palmetto developed SAD during the growing season then had a cold winter afterwords, I would expect it to be killed off. Even though Palmetto has excellent cold tolerance, if is severely weakened by the virus, and a cold winter will certainly do it in.

Now how you got I am not sure as it is a state wide problem in TX which can be carried in by cinch bugs from neighbors, or the dreaded lawn service company with contaminated equipment, and all TX lawn service company equipment is infected with SAD. Well heck any lawn service company equipment is infected with SAD regardless of the state assuming SA grows in that state.

Yeah tried an outdoor cat, but it didnt make it. Too many other large critters in the back yard.

And as far as SADV well it would have to be in the plugs I purchased. No one has St Augustine here so not sure if I could get it from the area. Its either zoysia or bermuda.

Sapphire appears to be SADV resistant. 3 years and I don't see any problem. Even the county extension office acknowledged that.