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Years ago my mom and I were working in my garden one spring afternoon. I had a nice row of okra a helicopter flew over and hovered for several minutes. Maybe they were mapping for the countywide property tax thing or maybe they were looking for the other grass. In these parts it once was ‘shine (Jr Johnson used to run down US421 to W-S regularly), my neighbor (who was the bil of the sheriff made and ran shine), later there was a lot of the other grass grown and now it seems to be meth. None of those are a part of my world but the only one I have a big problem with is meth.
What advice given these facts?
Stick, zoysia does fine in clay based soils. Whether plugging or sodding, if you till the soil and add some topsoil it will help the rooting and spreading. The grass selection really comes down to the texture you want. Zeon is a fine bladed and very dense grass. Zenith is a little coarser. Zoysia is pretty slow to spread, so it will take time to fill in by plugs, and you will need to keep weeds under control. Zoysia has many advantages, but disease resistance is not one of them in the real world. It gets a fungus that will thin it out and ruin your yard if not controlled. It is wise to use a fungicide spring and fall. To get the best growth, do not let it get too dry and do not push it much with fertilizer. That only encourages the fungus.
tractor, back in my radio days I got a job down in south GA. When I showed up the station manager assigned me to cover a court case in town. Seems a deputy and one of his friends had attempted to castrate a feller that had told the revenue agents where the deputy and his friend had some stills hidden and they had taken exception to his actions. This was 1975. The manager saw disbelief on may face and as I started to ask a question he cut me off and said “No, I’m not kidding.” I told him that sounded like a bad movie (Dueling banjos came to mind). That day I started looking for a job elsewhere and I was gone in less than a month.
BOTB and CD, we got down to 35 this AM but no frost thankfully. My apple tree is full of blooms!
Smarter than the average bear
This is a great thread on many levels.
I have a zoysia question for a 2nd row house in N. Topsail Beach. The yard gets full sun and is currently more or less dead sand that I will amend with topsoil. My original dream was Emerald but all this Zeon talk has me second guessing. It’s a rental unit so I wouldn’t be able to baby it with any extra irrigation, but at the very least I’d follow the CES turffiles recommendations for feeding and mowing.
Thoughts?
No way I’d put zoysia down at a rental at the beach.
Go St Augustine and be done with it.
McCallum
Is that for ease of maintenance or cost considerations? I thought about St. Augs because that is what everyone has, but damn, that’s what everyone has…
Yogi my grandad used to break up still that the neighbor set up. The SHP sat at the community store just waiting for him to drive out. After college I went to the Spartanburg, SC area for a job. Much the same conditions in those days. Now I’m living in the house my grandpa build (not had built) so back home again – apologies to Thomas Wolfe but you can go home again. I almost bought some half gallon mason jars at ole Tom’s estate sale which had never been used but I suspect were intended to hold ‘shine.
tractor, back in my radio days I got a job down in south GA. When I showed up the station manager assigned me to cover a court case in town. Seems a deputy and one of his friends had attempted to castrate a feller that had told the revenue agents where the deputy and his friend had some stills hidden and they had taken exception to his actions. This was 1975. The manager saw disbelief on may face and as I started to ask a question he cut me off and said “No, I’m not kidding.” I told him that sounded like a bad movie (Dueling banjos came to mind). That day I started looking for a job elsewhere and I was gone in less than a month.
BOTB and CD, we got down to 35 this AM but no frost thankfully. My apple tree is full of blooms!
Thanks…I’m going round and round with myself about zeon or zenith. Zeon was not on the price list that Super Sod gave me unless it’s disguised as their “new Leisure Time Zoysia” which is the most expensive that is about $90 more per 500 sq feet pallet. I’m going to go back to their store in Pineville this week and talk to them about zeon sod availability. Since I’m going to only do the front yard this year, I’ve tossed around the idea of sodding the area where my yard has some slope and rim the edge of the rest with sod, then seed the middll just to experiment. If I buy 6 pallets, I can get about a $30/pallet reduction in the price for the sod…Still not totally sure, but I started with the Roundup this afternoon. Gotta get my tiller tuned up so it goes to the shop tomorrow.
Hopefully Bill will send me a soil test back that says “good dirt” even if it’s not that black tobacco farm dirt from Eastern NC. Never will forget the first time I went to Pitt County when all of the fields had been disked up. I grew up in the Sandhills and also was familiar with clay, but I’d never seen such black soil in all my life.
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
Escaped it here, too, Yogi.
36° meh.
Besides the garden of tomato, pepper, thing,I am growing exotics to include the simulation of Duke Gardens for my babe.Got the other exotic in the newley planted maters. Fuxx it. State of NC really gives a sh#t about homegrown medicine?
I’ll be the first to let y’all know.
12 tomato plants and 2 that kinda, sorta look like ’em.All ya’lll that are fretting ’bout which “variety of grass” are working yourselves into a tissy over nuttin…
If the soil ain’t right, it don’t matter… especially just up Hwy17 at Topsail Beach….
Fix the soil, the grass / veggies “know what to do”….
Now that said, the things that determine the “type of grass… Zoysia, in this case, in my mind, have to do with color, texture, mowing height as those specifically relate to what exactly you’re trying to do…
Back on the turf farm up in Virginia… we grew MEYERS zoysia…. now that was back before the new “names” were developed… Meyers is wide bladed for a Zoysia… at 3 inches in the summertime… it looked like turf type fescue riding by from the street…
If you want low maintenance…. Fertilize it 2 times a year, irrigation not required and mow it every two-three weeks… there’s nothing more low maintenance that that !!!
If you want something else… then that’s okay too….
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Spring is here… no more up and down temps…. Veggies going in gardens all over NC next two weeks… Tobacco will be planted as soon as the land gets ready…
Looking for three nights above 60* as the next thing on the calendar sometime at the end of April… and then two 90* days back to back hopefully, at least 30 days or more later….
Just remember… it ain’t too late, if you hadn’t already done it….
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!BOTB, that’s why I do centipede, can let the grass grow for two weeks and sometimes three if really dry. Doesn’t need much N and de-thatch every 3 years and you’re good. And it runs like crazy, not like muda, but still good enuf.
Smarter than the average bear
One more zoysia post…Not to disagree with BotB…I think we are just coming from different angles. I don’t remember that Stick mentioned wanting a low maintenance grass, so here is something to think about. If you do want low maintenance as BotB described it, don’t waste your money on sodding zoysia, certainly not Zeon. Zoysia is a premium grass. It is primarily used for someone who wants an outstanding lawn, not a low maintenance one. If you are going to mow it every 2-3 weeks, not irrigate it, not control weeds and fungus, in a short amount of time you are not going to have zoysia, you are going to have different patches of whatever, which is what you already have. There is no such thing as low maintenance if you really want a nice lawn.
As for RegExp beach house, if you want something different, look into paspalum. I do not have any personal experience with it, but it is what the Braves use on their field, and what many coastal golf courses use, some even on their greens. It is salt tolerant, and has a very nice texture. Check it out with your sod farm, it might be a good choice.
H8r… I ain’t arguing ’bout it… Zoysia does both, just not at the same time… Either you get that Premium yard OR that low maintenance yard… I didn’t experience any of the problems listed — weeds or disease at 2.5″ with my classic Meyers…
FWIW… Mr. Stick is pushing 70 and wants to do this himself… he “wants” low maintenance regardless of what he may say… to push him the other way just wouldn’t be the right thing to do….
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On that turf farm in Virginia… back in 2001… I inherited a 1 acre test plot of Paspalum that the previous owners had nuked with roundup… Now the previous owners were one of the biggest corps in the sod business down in Georgia and Alabama, and they thought that Paspalum was top secret gold….I was told that down in the Bahamas… they use paspalum on fairways and irrigate with straight seawater…
Stuff came back strong in two years… so I started messing with it… looks like Tifway 119, grows like bermudagrass (1lb a week N, a little P&K @6.5, mow once a week at 1″ in the field, 1/2″ at harvest)…
Never sold any of it…
But if anybody has a “Salt problem” in the soil, UC=Davis studies say paspalum “hay” will remove something like 1/2 TON of salts from the soil a year… and cows loves it….
There’s another story here about a large meat processor who had a 120acre spray field for the “brine” coming out of the plant that had got on the wrong side of the Commonwealth’s Water Quality Folks… but that’s too long to print here…
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That all said, I’m looking for a turf farm to test some organic turf products… if you know a farm not too far away that might work for some test plots… let me know please….
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Cukes, Pole Beans coming up good down here after 4″ of rain last week… Squash and Zucchini didn’t survive the three nights around 40^ and didn’t come up… replanted those this week….
Remember, it ain’t too late if you hadn’t done it….
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!When I saw paspalum I wondered what the heck is that? BAHIAGRASS! YUCK! I hate that crap, and there is only one way I know of to get completely rid of it, cimmaron plus! Works wonders. I can’t think of anyone in their right mind who would actually plant that darn stuff. It’s ugly as heck, throws up foot high shoots in less than a week after mowing, invasive as heck. UGLY!
I repeat, for the lowest maintenance centipede. It ain’t called the lazy man’s grass for nothing. Grows from sod or plugs, very low fertilizer requirements. Drought tolerant, low growing (rarely gets over 2.5 inches high), small seed shoots. If you feed it low amounts of K and iron it will green up really well. The Tif Blair variety is really a great looking grass. I used 5 pallets of sod to get 4 acres growing in 3 years to crowd out bermuda that my wife talked me into initially (she didn’t have to mow said 4 acres). Two and half of those acres only get mowed every 3 weeks. Oh, and I have almost no weeds.
Smarter than the average bear
When I lived in Spartanburg county (SC) decades ago my yard (hard to call it a lawn) was sodded with centipede. As to low upkeep yes. Rough bladed and tough. Worked well on that hillside.
I was sprigging centipede before many of you guys were born and mowed with a push reel mower. Yea, it’s easy, but I don’t like it…I don’t think I said “low maintenance”, just a different maintenance. Looking like “Amen Corner” would be nice!
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
stick, you ain’t got that many years on me. I do like my pede, but to each his own. It’s hard to say that pede needs much maintenance at all. You can just about ignore it and it will still grow. I’ve had zoysia in two houses and it works but it takes a long time to get “in” comparatively speaking.
Smarter than the average bear
I am so worried about you boys.
Green is green, and ya mow when the shooters get a little higher than the blades…Right?Looking like “Amen Corner” would be nice!
That’s where H8r trying to steer you. And you don’t get there with “low maintenance”.
‘stick not a fan either but it serve the purpose on the hillside.
I agree with what a lot of you are saying about centipede or St. Aug…Except for the 3 years I had a house in Raleigh and the last 18 in Rock Hill, that’s all I ever had because I lived in Eastern NC, then Low Country of SC. Only problem I had with it in Beaufort, SC was keeping the Live Oak leaves off of it.
I don’t remember it, but helped my Mom sprig the yard of our first house back when I could barely walk. Then later sprigged most of the second house in 57 after my Dad got sick and died. Mowed the first yard which was about 1 1/2 acres with a push mower. Mom finally bought a gas mower with the second house.
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
I am so worried about you boys.
Green is green, and ya mow when the shooters get a little higher than the blades…Right?To make you happy, CD, I bought some Reapers and some Ghosts today to plant in the garden…My local guy had sold out of the Reapers last year before I got there. Put some peas in, planting a few maters and some cukes this weekend and am playing with some other peppers from seed in the greenhouse.
12 more cabinet doors and I’ll be through with this kitchen renovation…
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
I’m nearly happy now, Stick.
Thank you.You need some Jose shooters.
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
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