March 1, 2025 Update

Posted on March 1, 2025  (Last modified on March 7, 2025) • 3 min read • 474 words

First post of the season. Yay.

When we left off last November, I applied a dose of Prodiamine 65WDG  to the front yard to prevent/slow weed growth over the winter. I think it worked really well. I had very little weed growth up until just a few weeks ago. It’s also quite a different story in the back yard where I did not apply any Prodiamine. The bare spots there have significant weed growth.

Last Summer, I was really focused on the front yard and experimenting a little, so I didn’t do much in the back. This year, the front and back will get the same treatments.

Today, I ran the mower over everything at its highest setting hoping to mulch the leaves. That didn’t work at all, so I ended up raking it all up.

You can see in the pictures below that the St. Augustine is mostly still dormant, with a few areas starting to come alive. The green you see in the bare area are little spots of crabgrass that just started sprouting up.

After raking the leaves and cleaning it up, I applied an early-Spring treatment of Prodiamine and watered it in. Though I haven’t started watering regularly, this was a good opportunity to turn on and test the irrigation system and confirm nothing bad happened over the winter.

There are a few areas that filled in last summer, but are still a little thin. This summer’s growing season should take care of that, as well as (I hope) grow another 2-4 feet into the bare area.

My plan next weekend is to spot treat all the bare areas, and the weedy areas in the back, with Roundup to kill any vegetation actively growing. By the end of March or early April, the St. Augustine should be 50-75% green and ready for fertilizer.

We’ll see how things look in May, but I’m still debating whether to repeat last year and rob some ‘plugs’ from the back yard to move to the front (with which I had good results), buy plugs, or not worry about it and let the grass fill in naturally.

The issue I foresee with plugs is that I do get some Bermuda grass runners mixed in where the St. Augustine isn’t so strong/full. If I let it grow naturally, the St. Augustine out-competes the Bermuda grass as it grows into the bare spots. That lets me continue to treat any Bermuda grass further away with Roundup without hurting the St. Augustine. With plugs, though, the Bermuda grass will grow in near the plugs, competing with the St. Augustine for resources. And there’s not much I can do besides manually pulling the Bermuda grass out. The end result would likely be weaker St. Augustine and a lot of Bermuda grass mixed in that I’ll never get rid of.