Where do you live? My best St Augustine has never seen direct sunlight. It's between a 20-ft crape myrtle and a 15-ft pear tree. Zoysia is worse in the shade than St Augustine.

Tell me more.

• Where do you live?
• How high/low are the lowest tree limbs?
• What is your watering schedule? How long and how often do you water?
• How high/low do you mow?
• When did you fertilize last and what did you use?

- north texas

- lowest limbs are... pretty high. We had the canopy raised a few years ago. Probably 20-25 feet? We may need to trim again

- water every other day for 10 min per station

- we definitely were mowing too low for a while. Now we do highest setting on Kobalt mower, which I think is 3”

- fertilized once in late March, using weed and feed for southern lawns. Hired a landscaper for other things, he aerated and fertilized about 3 weeks ago.

another note: previous owner added a lot of sand. We can see tree roots all over the place in the lawn, I think that adds to the problems, but I’m afraid if we add top soil it will mess up our drainage.

HELP! 🙂

Your shade is no problem at all for St Augustine. The big problem is you have been overwatering, and, I'm 90% certain a disease has taken out your St Augustine. I live in Bandera and have watered only one time this year. With the rains we got this week I likely will not water again until sometime in June.

If you get down on your knees and look at your grass, does it look like this?

I get this every year in small spots. I fix it every year by applying ordinary corn meal at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You can get a 50-pound bag of corn meal at your feed store for well under $10. If you had told me that you lived in Frisco or (???), I could have given you a list of feed stores near you to call. There's a zillion in "North Texas" so I'll let you figure it out. Apply it any time. Moisten the corn meal and wash it off the grass blades, but it does not need to be dissolved. Just get it down to the soil. If your grass is that far gone, you're going to need more than one dose of corn meal. I would apply now and again in 3 weeks.

Also you are wasting fertilizer. I will be fertilizing my yard for the first time next weekend (Memorial Day). Since corn meal is an organic fertilizer (in addition to disease deterrent), you can cancel your lawn people for now. But first check with them to see if they have applied a fungicide to the lawn. If they have, then the corn meal will not work. Corn meal relies on an organic approach to disease control, and fungicides destroy the microbes necessary for it to work.