Below is an article written in March by Neil Sperry to help understand what many are seeing this Spring.
North Texas' wacky weather has caused serious chaos in our lawns and landscapes BY NEIL SPERRY.
SPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAM MARCH 17, 2023 6:00 AM
St. Augustine should green up once things warm up. NEIL SPERRY Special to the Star-Telegram I'm a Native Texan, specifically of the Metroplex for 53 years. I have decided that our weather is wacky. The past 25 months have caused some of the most unusual chaos in our lawns and landscapes that I've seen since my wife and I got here. Let me describe a few situations and explain where we're heading as the weather warms and things start to grow (or ought to).
St. Augustine looks like it's toasted, roasted and history. I've had more people asking if they're going to have to replant their lawns this spring than in any spring I can remember. I have St. Augustine, and our yard is in a micro-climate that gets a few degrees colder than most of the rest of North Central Texas. I looked at my turf before I started writing this column, and I can see what people are thinking. It looks pretty pathetic. However, I also see sprigs of green coming up through the browned runners. My bet is that much of the St. Augustine will green up and come out just fine once things warm up.
Have patience and apply an all-nitrogen fertilizer with 30% to 40% of that nitrogen in encapsulated or coated (timed-release) form. It's still a bit cool to do that, so practice your patience. Yes, we had a drought last summer some might say a "biblical" drought.
But I don't believe that was the only cause for the St. Augustine downfall. Concurrent with the drought we also were slammed by a chinch bug invasion. These pests make our lawns look dry, just as a drought will do. People watered their lawns thinking "drought" as they did, but they didn't notice that the grass wasn't responding. Before they knew it, entire sections of the St. Augustine were dying, and the drought was getting undue credit. If you find that your St. Augustine doesn't green up this spring, take note of where the browned areas are. If they're only in full sun, then chinch bugs were probably the cause. In that case you'll want to re-plant, and when you do, you'll need to protect the new grass in those same areas from chinch bugs this summer and for summers to come. Chinch bugs are always going to be in the hottest, sunniest parts of your lawn, so you'll want to start watching for the telltale signs of dry grass that doesn't respond to irrigation starting in mid-June this year. Apply an insecticide labeled for chinch bugs when you see the BB-sized black insects with irregular white diamonds on their backs.