I grew up in central Florida. One of the things that my dad enjoyed
doing in our yard was watering the grass. We had a yard filled with
St. Augustine grass. It's a nice thick turf grass that sends out
runners and takes over an area, but it needs a lot of sunlight. So in
areas where there were trees or shade, it tended not to grow very
well.
When I moved away from central Florida we moved to northern Georgia
near Atlanta. Most people there grew fescue grass and really enjoyed
their fescue grass and seeding and overseeding and aerating and
fertilizing and messing with their tall fescue grass every year.
They would talk about how to have the best fescue grass yard and brag
about how great they were doing. I just wanted St. Augustine grass. I
read about Zoysia and I read about other kinds of grasses, but I
wanted St. Augustine.
So one year when we went to my parents' house I dug up some plugs of
St. Augustine grass from their yard. I grabbed some runners off of the
edge where it was overgrowing onto the driveway I put it all in a
plastic bag and brought it to Georgia. I planted the plugs and made
sure roots on the runners were covered with red Georgia clay and a
little bit of dirt and then I waited. I knew that it would take a
while since I wasn't getting sod or anything but my hope was that it
would take over the area between the sidewalk and our house and then
it would take over as much of the backyard as it could.
I hoped it would take some of the front yard, but it had already
established turf grass that I didn't think the St. Augustine could
beat easily. I didn't really water it or fertilize it after I planted
it, I just let it grow.
I'd treat it like all the rest of the grass and mow, and it spread. It
spread to take over the area that I wanted it to take over. It spread
throughout the backyard. When it hit the areas of the backyard that
were shaded for the majority of the day, it stopped.
It did it just what I wanted it to do. This was funny to me because
when I told someone that had a background in horticulture and
experience in working with plants about what I was doing they said it
would never work and that St. Augustine couldn't grow that far north.
I just laughed and told them "Well, I've got a yard full of it in
Georgia right now."
There are some issues with my St. Augustine grass. Each year when
everybody's out buying pre-emergent weed killer and all the things
that they talk about here in Georgia, I don't do that.
My wife says we need to spray the yard for weeds and I remind her that
the weed killer that we have here in Georgia will kill St. Augustine
grass. So we need to leave it alone.
There are weeds that come up in the St. Augustine grass, but St.
Augustine is slower to get going in the spring than everything else.
And so the weeds have a field day and then the heat comes and St.
Augustine chokes them out and covers them up.
It's pretty funny. I always laugh when I walk on it in my bare feet
and go, yeah, this stuff won't grow in Georgia.
Silly how I do things that people say can't be done. Over and over and over...
#grass #yard
