Lawn Advice Needed - Weird "weed" grass in Mo City (Houston: Home Depot, buy)

[dgould944]

I have St. Aug in my back yard but this crazy grass-looking weed showed up. What is it and how do I get rid of it? I tried the OTC weedkiller for lawns that you hook up to your hose. No effect on this. I'm in Missouri City, TX.

[ilikeme]

Try spreading weed and feed fertilizer.

[texsn95]

Looks like most of your St A is dead. Do you have drainage issues back there? Time for a re-sod.

[BlkGuyBlkGT]

I'm not sure I see any St. Augustine grass in that pic. After using weed killer on that, it seems all you will be left with is just dirt. IMO, I would use roundup on the whole lawn then re-sod.

[slbnoob]

Was this lawn ever even taken care of?
If not, why not just leave whatever's natural out there anyway! Is there anything else left that can be taken over by this weed?

[rockinar]

I'm expert at lawn care. It's not my living but it's my hobby. What you have is called "Poa Annua". AKA Bluegrass. It's nasty stuff. All those seed heads are spreading it even more each time the wind blows and next year will be worse. Your whole lawn is Poa Annua! Crazy, never seen that before. There's no way this just started this year. This has been going on for years and compounding each year. Good news is it will die off soon. The Texas summer heat will kill it (it likes cool weather) leaving it a brown weedy patch and just St Augustine (if there is any) and other weeds that may thrive in the heat. Just hit it with the mower and pretend it's grass for now if you want (it grows fast though). Some golf courses even use this "weed" as their turfgrass. Or you can kill it with Roundup and try to start fresh and resod.

As mentioned, I don't see any St Augustine. If there is some St Augustine, you can salvage the yard as long as it gets good sunlight. Could take 2-3 years maybe based on the pics.

I personally would drop the mower as low as it will go, scalp the lawn down to the dirt, apply starter fertilizer and re-sod.

If you don't want to resod or mess with it much, I would just hit it with the mower and work on getting the grass growing and healthy (if there is any). St Augustine is a creeping grass and is basically a weed like Bermuda. If there's any in the yard, it will grow like a crazy weed when the summer hits. So option B....hit it with the mower and apply Starter Fertilizer about every 4 weeds as directed on the bag. You will have to mow often to keep the Poa down.

You need to learn what "pre emergent" is and start doing that. You have crazy Poa weed infestation that will pop up worse next year. A heathy lawn and pre emergent will keep the weeds down to a minimum.

Don't buy ANY "Weed and feed" its all garbage that does neither kill weeds are fertilize very good. It's an easy sell to lazy homeowners who don't know any better. On top of that you have no control on what weeds the herbicide kills or the ratio. Just buy your fertilizer and selective herbicide separate.


I could go on and on about how to turn the yard around into a rockstar.

The best thing you can possibly do is get a soil sample and send it to Texas A&M for testing. That will tell you what fertilizers and nutrients your lawn is lacking and what you need to do.

It's only $10 for the basic test to get you started. This is how you get yard of the month. Without the test, you are just taking a guess. That's what 98% of the morons at Home Depot are doing.

http://soiltesting.tamu.edu/files/urbansoil.pdf

[Houston321]

I've been following Randy Lemmon's lawn schedule for a few years, works real good if you stick to it. Thanks for the tip on the soil test, that seems real good.

Randy Lemmon

[texsn95]

Or you could scalp it as mentioned and nuke the yard with bermuda seed. Some of it will take, then the fight will be on for the bermuda to retake the yard.

[rockinar]

Originally Posted by Houston321

I've been following Randy Lemmon's lawn schedule for a few years, works real good if you stick to it. Thanks for the tip on the soil test, that seems real good.

Randy Lemmon

Soil test is the ONLY way to go. I bet Randy's yard does not even look this good.
This is not my yard, but it's someone's yard who goes on soil tests and follows the Bermuda Bible. That's Tiff 419 Bermuda.

[rockinar]

Originally Posted by texsn95

Or you could scalp it as mentioned and nuke the yard with bermuda seed. Some of it will take, then the fight will be on for the bermuda to retake the yard.

Bermuda seed is common Bermuda. It's junk. You want hybrid Bermuda if you go with Bermuda, and it only comes in sod. You could totally sod, or just make plugs from it. 100X less headache than seed and better quality Bermuda.