I am west of Austin, and have spent a lot of time and money over the last 8 years getting my St Augustine yard in shape. Mine too looks like hay right now.

After reading this thread, I went out and looked. It appears that it will all be okay. Grass blades are green and coming up. Even in some of the areas where it is very thin it is coming back. I am not applying pre-emergent or fertilizer right now however. Going to let it do it's thing for awhile.

Starting to come back here in Fort bend county.

I fertilized with 15-5-10 on Saturday and it rained Sunday.

It is already greening up today.

Looked like hay on Saturday.

I put down 15-5-10 yesterday before it rained. Guess we'll see what happens

Im going to rake it, to remove some of the leaf/thatch, and mow a level down. Then I'll aerate in a few weeks, and top dress a thin layer.

I put down pre-emergent not long before all this happened. My neighbor has a bad weed problem that I'm always fighting to keep out of my lawn. Hopefully it didnt do too much damage (other than maybe kill off some of his weeds).

Thunder18 said:

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Thinking about putting bermuda in my backyard if the SA stays dead. I kind of hope it does

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I wonder if the sod farms are going to have damaged product? Looking to put down about 8k sq feet of 419 Tiff Bermuda at our new place in a few weeks.

lawless89 said:

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Thunder18 said:

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Thinking about putting bermuda in my backyard if the SA stays dead. I kind of hope it does

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I wonder if the sod farms are going to have damaged product? Looking to put down about 8k sq feet of 419 Tiff Bermuda at our new place in a few weeks.

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I wondered the same thing.

I'd like to phase out my St. Augustine and go with Zoysia. But that just seems like it would take a herculean effort.

I cut mine and raked it tonight. 2nd from the lowest, so not really a true scalp. Looks a lot better than I thought it would.

Same here...after freeze wife even commented about color of our grass. I hadn't used since last summer

gigemJTH12 said:

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trip98 said:

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HDeathstar said:

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Houston 2/26. Cut grass low and bagged clippings. Sprayed with Medina + and put down Nitro-Phos Sweet Green and Azomite minerals.

Looking greener. Hoping for a big kick after the rain today. Did not water it in since rain was coming.

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I use sweet green in the summer when the heat is stressing and it's awesome
This time of year I use nitro phos weed n feed. Like other poster said...following Randy has been good but a couple wrinkles added make a huge difference. Doing weed n feed has been one of them.

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can you link me to the Sweet green you buy?

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It's a Randy lemmon recommend. I got it from warrens garden center in Kingwood. Won't find at big box but I think I did see it at Houston garden center

Mine seems to have held up in DFW, but it is palmetto variety which is more cold tolerant

Totally brown 10 days ago, greening up now. Raleigh in the front yard, Flortam in back. Watered, will fertilize in about 2 weeks.

Y'all are being dramatic. The grass will grow back just fine. Just go through your normal routine.

B-1 83 said:

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Totally brown 10 days ago, greening up now. Raleigh in the front yard, Flortam in back. Watered, will fertilize in about 2 weeks.

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Had Floritam in most of my yard when I lived in beeville, some Raleigh. The Floritam was absolutely dominant and could spread several feet per year. The previous owners of my house never really did much of anything with the back yard and it was almost full when I moved in late 17.

Thick, never had fungus or bug issues!

In SA and have plenty of green deep and I think it will come back pretty normal. Still got a couple of weeks before it grows, but will start to green up over the next 2 weeks.

I'm hitting my problem areas with peat this weekend after I lower a couple of notches a clean it up. I do need a small area Of replant due to thin soils, hoping there will be some quality sod squares out there.

FlowCtlr said:

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Y'all are being dramatic. The grass will grow back just fine. Just go through your normal routine.

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Ha, my hunch about this thread too!

I have a mature SA lawn in CS I barely ever fertilize. Mowing it properly and watering it as needed in July/August so it doesn't fry, has kept it robust enough the last coupla decades. On a street with a lot of neglected rental house lawns mine looks lush like I spend actual money on it outside my water bill. Pretty sure it will pull thru this little episode too!

aggiedent said:

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I hate St. Augustine. Really don't care at this point. If it dies, I'm going with something else.

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Same here. After many years, I don't care anymore.

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He hates Scotts Weed and Feed and I have found it to work great in early spring (sorry malenurse) - living in Houston I would usually have put that down in mid-February assuming we had no freezes in the forecast. The science behind it burning roots makes sense so I try to keep it away from trees and shrubs but it works well.

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The reason folks say not to use weed & feed is because if you put it down in February, it's much too early for fertilization. The grass isn't actively growing & the fert just washes off accomplishing nothing.

If you put it down late, the pre-emergent chemicals are harmful to trees & the spring weeds have already germinated. Your trees have roots that extend out 3x the width of the dripline of the tree, so you likely aren't avoiding roots. At least you are applying it in February when the trees are dormant & not taking up the chemical.

Best to avoid Bonus S Weed & Feed type products.... very wasteful & harmful to the environment. Scott's should be ashamed of themselves for promoting the product.

Hire The Weed Man in your area,.. then don't wordy about...profit

"Worry about it"...dang fat fingers

I'm a little late to the game. Weeds have already taken up a lions share of what is green in my yard.

If I were going to start on Randy Lemmons schedule, is there any benefit to Doing the pre-emergent at this point? I do have a lot of dirt spots where everything dies from the freeze.

They might still be winter weeds looming.

I would go ahead and put your pre-emergent down immediately. You might be a little late but the spring late Feb/early March is the most critical application for the year. Not sure about what Lemon said, but Neil Sperry recommended the application a couple of weeks ago for the Houston area.

PearlandAg09 said:

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They might still be winter weeds looming.

I would go ahead and put your pre-emergent down immediately. You might be a little late but the spring late Feb/early March is the most critical application for the year. Not sure about what Lemon said, but Neil Sperry recommended the application a couple of weeks ago for the Houston area.

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How long do you wait after the pre-emergent until you put down the fertilizer? 2 weeks long enough to wait?

yes, that is typically the recommendation i follow and see from the professionals.

edit: Wrong emoji

I'm putting out preemergent today. Probably not ideal, but with the freeze I wanted to wait a little while for the grass to get going a bit.

Mine is coming back great. Second mow of the season for me today. Getting more and more green. I skipped the pre-emergent this year and just put down starter fertilizer on it last week. I didn't want to stress it coming out of the severe freeze. We will see how it goes

RCR06 said:

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I'm putting out preemergent today. Probably not ideal, but with the freeze I wanted to wait a little while for the grass to get going a bit.

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What brand/bag?

tmaggie50 said:

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RCR06 said:

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I'm putting out preemergent today. Probably not ideal, but with the freeze I wanted to wait a little while for the grass to get going a bit.

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What brand/bag?

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I'll have to get back to you when I get home. I had some in a bag left from last year, but didn't pay much attention to the brand.

tmaggie50 said:

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RCR06 said:

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I'm putting out preemergent today. Probably not ideal, but with the freeze I wanted to wait a little while for the grass to get going a bit.

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What brand/bag?

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Sorry it took me so long to get back to you....I forgot. Nitro Phos Barricade.

Put down a slow release fert Monday before this week's rains. Still haven't had many, if any, 150 degree day/nights so we'll see, but there's some evidence of some loss in my yard. Most is starting to green up but there are some areas that look like there was a decent amount of loss, but there are some green runners so we'll see how it fills in this year.

up-n-aTm said:

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In Corpus Christi- my yard is already about 50% recovered and it was bad. I started Randy Lemmon last year, so it was really coming in before the freeze. I honestly think it will be back to normal in a month or so.

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Where in Corpus do you buy Nitro-phos stuff and other Randy Lemmon/A&M recommended lawn products? Just moved here and need to get my usual stuff.

aragno said:

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up-n-aTm said:

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In Corpus Christi- my yard is already about 50% recovered and it was bad. I started Randy Lemmon last year, so it was really coming in before the freeze. I honestly think it will be back to normal in a month or so.

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Where in Corpus do you buy Nitro-phos stuff and other Randy Lemmon/A&M recommended lawn products? Just moved here and need to get my usual stuff.

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Go to Turners and get their store brand 19-5-9. It is top notch.

Good time to treat for chinchbugs as well.

My St. Augustine looks like crap in 1/4 of the yard in the Coastal Bend because we had to shut down the irrigation to build a slab on grade/frame/hardie shed. Maybe we need a hurricane on the coastal area we live so we can get some rain.....