First and most importantly, never rototill the soil in preparation for grass. The only people who recommend that are those who are selling you stuff to fix the damage it does.

It's really hard to identify the grass in the picture because you took the picture in the sunlight which provides too much contrast. If you could get about 3 inches away in the shade, and get a picture before you mow it, that would make it easier.

Where do you live? That helps to ID grasses, too. Carpet grass is the common name for several plants. Generally that term is too generic to be meaningful.

If this is St Augustine grass, then you cannot seed it. If it is centipede, then you can seed it. But since you live in Texas and the grass seems to be thriving, that would just about rule out centipede, because our soil is waaaay too alkaline for centipede. Some parts of east Texas can grow centipede.

Assuming it is St Augustine, you can buy it in sod form by the piece at some nurseries who specialize in selling sod. You'll have to call around. St Augustine spreads by sending runners called stolons across the top of the soil. Those take root and send more stolons. In full sun it forms a dense turf. In shade it forms a much less dense turf, but it still grows. Centipede would not survive in any shade, so that might help you identify the grass. There are many varieties of St Augustine. Except for the Floratam variety, which has a purplish stolon, the rest are fairly indistinguishable from each other. Some have finer blades and some grow more compact. We'd never be able to tell from a photo, though. In any case, one piece of St Augustine planted in your weedy yard will eventually become a full St Augustine lawn if you take proper care of it.

St Augustine thrives under certain conditions. Always mow it at the highest setting on your mower. When you do that it will walk right over bermuda and other grasses. Also with St Aug you can never allow it to dry out. That does not mean it needs soggy soil, that just means if you have not had rain in a month, you need to water the lawn. In the hottest heat of summer, it needs to be watered deeply once a week. Deeply means a full inch of water as measured by a rain gage. This time of year for most of Texas you can get away with watering once every 2-3 weeks. After next month you can go to monthly watering just to maintain the health of the soil. With grass as dense as yours, if you water like this you'll never see another weed.

Fertilizer should be applied late in the spring (late May), early in the fall (early September), and again late in the fall (Thanksgiving). Also depending on where you live you could apply in mid February, too. I prefer organic fertilizer for many reasons, but you would use the same schedule for either chemical or organic.

Thanks for the response! I will take another pic tomorrow. As far as where in Texas we live in the eastern part of the DFW metroplex.

Another photo. Zoysia?

Thanks for the location.

That is definitely St Augustine. Also you have a disease process going on. It is cool enough now that you could use a chemical fungicide, but I have had excellent success killing fungal diseases using ordinary ground corn, like you get at the grocery store or feed store (in plain brown bags). The stuff I buy is milled in Dallas, so you should be able to find it easily. Apply at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Water it once just enough to wash the corn dust down onto the soil and leave it for several weeks.

This time of year you should only be watering once every 3 weeks anyway. I'm guessing that you're watering a lot more often and that is the reason for the disease. St Aug should have no brown or yellow spots on the blades. It should look like this...

{{gwi:79715}}

That particular spot had been treated for disease with corn meal several weeks earlier and had recovered.

That's odd about the watering. We live on 1 acre with half of it under sprinkler. This area pictured isn't sprinkled and is only watered when it rains. Thanks for the help I'm really new at this. I would like to see this take over the entire yard. We have some well established Bermuda in some places.when and how can I promote this to speed up the growing and spreading process. Thanks again I really appreciate it.

St Aug can never be allowed to dry out completely. It has no drought dormancy like bermuda does. When the St Aug appears to go "dormant" it is really dead. Then at the first rainstorm, the bermuda revives from dormancy and takes over. So you have to prevent that. St Aug spreads in the cooler months of the growing season. It will send runners over the surface about 5 feet in all directions in May and again in September. Take advantage of that.

Tips for creating conditions where St Aug will take over:
1. When you do water, water deeply and only the St Aug. Make the bermuda and other weeds suffer drought as much as you can control that.

2. Always mow at the mower's highest setting. There is NEVER a reason to lower the deck for St Augustine. Bermuda, when mowed high, will thin out leaving plenty of light for the St Aug runners to spread. Then when the relatively coarse St Aug blades grow up tall, they will shade out the bermuda underneath. Bermuda is extremely sensitive to shade, so the tall, coarse, St Aug will literally choke it completely out.

3. When you fertilize, only fertilize the St Augustine. You can see the runners running into the other grasses. Drop a line of alfalfa pellets or other organic fertilizer right along the St Aug runners. Of course eventually the St Aug will fill in and you'll be fertilizing the entire lawn. This is fine because bermuda really needs monthly feedings to thrive. St Aug can get along fine with 3 feedings per year.

4. If you have weeds IN THE ST AUGUSTINE, spray it with an atrazine herbicide late in April after all the weeds are up and growing. You can only spray atrazine once per year, so make it count. If you have weeds in the area where the St Augustine has not yet conquered the turf, I would leave that alone until next season. Atrazine will kill both broadleaf and grassy weeds and leave the St Augustine relatively unscathed. It will also cause problems with fetal development, so don't roll around on the lawn with your pregnant wife after spraying. It's bad stuff.

Would you have any idea what type of St. Auguststine this is?

It it has purple cast to the stolons (runners) then it is Floratam. If not then it might be anything.

Can you pull out a sprig and post a pic of it?

Mature

Seedhead

Runners look like this. Thank you!!

Runners look like this. Thank you!!

{{!gwi}}

That's weird. These pictures don't look like the first ones to me. Can you take another one of the seed head? All I see is grass.

Seedhead

That's definitely not st. Augustine. Looks like bahia grass to me, 90% sure. Google bahia grass images and see if it matches what you have. Bahia is definitely more heat tolerant than St augustine.

After taking closer looks, it could possibly be a course type zoysia, anyone else?

Yes, any of those but not a St Augustine seed head.

The best garden pictures are taken outdoors on a cloudy day to reduce the contrast. Taking a flash picture against a flashy white background increases the contrast about 1000x. Your first picture was too contrasty to see much because of the sun and the angle of the sun. This last picture is much worse. Still it doesn't need to be any better to identify that as NOT St Aug.