That is King Ranch bluestem. It was developed by the King Ranch people as forage for their livestock. Now the state of Texas has adopted it to fill in between all the highway medians. The seed is prolific and the stuff is spreading everywhere.

My new house in George West came with some encroaching into my yard. Furthermore the field upwind of me is full of it. I have an experiment going on to test the ability of tall St Augustine to resist drought. At the same time it seems to be resisting the encroachment of the bluestem. I am encouraging the SA with water and fertilizer and not doing anything to the bluestem. After 18 months I believe the bluestem is stopped where it was while there are SA runners moving out among the stands of bluestem. My hope is that the bluestem will succumb to the SA as it grows up and shades out the shorter bluestem. Bluestem blades are fine and curl over when about a foot long. The SA blades are coarse and continue upright as much as 32 inches high. I don't think the bluestem has a chance against unmowed SA.

Here is a picture showing what I'm dealing with.

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You can barely see my dog's ears and upright tail in the picture. She's part chow so she's not a little dog. You can also see the bluestem at the fence line and at the right edge of the picture. At the end of the blacktop is entirely bermuda with the St Augustine making slow progress in there. That is the west side of the property and there is no sprinkler out there, so I'm working on it. Progress is slow but steady.

I find the St Aug spreads best when overwatered. Rather than watering one inch per week all at once, water 2 to 3 inches all at once. Then wait 10 days to water deeply again. Fertilize heavily with organic fertilizer. Heavily means at least 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet monthly for 2-3 months. You can use more the second time you apply. If you use more the first time you apply you might not like the aroma of decaying grain. You can't use chemical fertilizer to get the results I'm thinking of. You'll burn the grass. My favorite organic fertilizer is rabbit chow (1/4-inch alfalfa pellets). Let the grass get tall - which in your case means mow no lower than the highest setting and skip a week or two between mowing. That should allow the St Augustine to get above the bluestem grass blades and slow the progress at least. Keep after the bluestem stems with your string trimmer. Try not to let the seed heads form.

that's interesting. now i see why my local nursery was hesitant to identify the grass, with ranchers developing their own grasses. I'm right near a field that the city maintains and I'm probably caught some of the seeds from that field.

I applied organic fertilizer in the spring. Also, I can see StAug runners sprouting now. I've been using a reel mower and it doesn't cut the runners, or those bluestem stems (as you can call them), but I've been already at them with my string trimmer.

Watering the area heavily seems counterintuitive to me, since I don't really see much StAug there that would grow over this patch.

Just water the St Aug heavily. Don't water the bare spots.

Another thought is you could put a soaker hose at the edge of the St Aug. I would put it on an extraordinarily slow drip at the faucet. Slow means no more than 1 cup per minute. Connect at least 75 feet of soaker hose to that and you have a very slow drip irrigation system. St Augustine will really thrive under the very slow drip. The soil microbes will thrive also with the very slow and deep watering.

If Bermuda is kept short will it pretty much choke out the bluestem? I have an area that I will be seeding next summer that is full of it.

Should I apply round up before seeding?

Thanks

td, yes you should kill the bluestem first. That stuff is tenacious. I have some that is resisting being overtaken by my tall St Augustine experiment. The tall St Aug (about 12 inches in that area) does not seem to choke out the bluestem, so I would have very limited hopes for bermuda choking it out.

Thanks dchall. I have been able to pretty much control it in my current lawn that is Bermuda. Still trying to fight it in some spots. I have resulted to digging them out and hand pulling in an effort to get the Bermuda to spread.

I guess I should apply a couple rounds of round-up this winter and spring before I seed the Bermuda in the summer? This area is a strip of my 1 acre property that I am trying to keep half way decent so the bluestem doesn't give me problems in the future on my current lawn.

By any chance, does 2,4-d or msma, help control what I have in my current lawn?

a year later, I still have large patches of the bluestem. I pulled a majority of it out today. It is mostly bound to the area where there is full sun. I see some of it in other areas of the lawn and I just pull it at the root. Lopping off the singular stems just keeps the problem grass around.

I tried the soaker hose at the edges but a combination of laziness and now skepticism has me abandoning that method of proprogating the StAug.

So here's a Before photo.

and here's the After photo.

I kept some of the clover that stays low to the ground and nearly all of the wildflowers.

so now I have this large patch of dirt, some ants running around, some more of the bluestem to pull and some another type of grass growing in an area to the back-right that has a more sandy soil composition. covering this whole area with mulch seems pricey.

seems to me that the longer term solution is to have more shade trees, been planting and growing trees over the last two years or so, but may put some structure back there, like a shed/picnic tables

I may do the overwatering method this time, as I see some of the StAug runners under the bluestem.