Jason,

I am relatively new to the whole organic process myself, however; I have my doubts that the compost tea is the culprit of your lawn turning yellow. You mentioned that you have not fertilized as of yet this year. I would recommend an application of Soy Bean Meal.

I too had a pretty serious thatch problem prior to starting my organic process. I started out with mechanical aeration which I now do every fall. From there I put down Corn Gluten in the spring, and throughout the summer I will alternate between soybean meal/milorginite/alfalfa..........or any other grain I can find. I still have a few spots of the lawn that still have some heavy thatch buildup but for the most part the situation as a whole has improved greatly

I agree with jlaak that the compost tea itself is not the issue. More possibly the fact that your weather is mild and soil is wet you are getting some fungus issues. I would put down corn meal instead of Soy Bean meal to fight any fungus. This shouldn't be as bad as fungus in the fall and as your temperatures rise, it should get better quickly.

St Augustine seems to be a touchy grass when it comes to lawn diseases. The corn meal definitely sounds smart to me at the moment. Also, 10 gallons with air stones might be pushing it as far as having enough oxygen to distribute evenly throughout the container. I think a better route would be to do 4-5 gallons and then mix it with the other 5 or so gallons of dechlorinated water when you are ready to spread. Is there a long period of time from taking the air stones out to applicating? I try not to allow more than 20 minutes go by from the time the air goes off to where it is on the ground but you probably are OK with 45-60 minutes. The tea smelled OK though right? Did you just mix the compost into the water or did you have a filtered system like Deuley's? I have to say I've never seen good compost come from the box stores like I get at a nursery- they are usually some form of composted manure but maybe things are different at other locations.

Welcome aboard and get ready to have the greenest/healthiest lawn on the block.

I highly doubt the tea you applied has anything to do with the yellowing. My guess, Your lawn is Starving and needs some food ASAP. Warm season grasses should be fed 4x per year staring early spring thru fall. For example I will be applying my 2nd feeding of the year at the end of May. You just got a late start, but not to worry, your grass will be fine.

For my first feeding of the new year I like to apply both Soybean meal and Alfalfa Pellets. Both @ 10-15lbs per 1000sqft. In your case 2 - 50lbs of Soybean Meal and 2 - 50lb bags of Alfalfa pellets. Soybean meal has a High protein content which will provide your grass with much need nitrogen. Alfalfa's major benefit is the high availability of trace minerals and trianconatol, a natural fatty-acid growth stimulant. It also offers some NPK.

I would recommend applying both of these this weekend or asap and water them in with 3/4-1" of water.

As for water; a general rule of thumb 3/4-1" of water once a week in the middle of summer. To determine how long to run your sprinkler system to apply this much water, set out several coffee or tuna fish cans in each zone of the sprinkler system and see how long it takes to fill them to the desired depth. Be sure to check your irrigation system for uniform coverage at the same time.

Mowing; Set your mower to the highest setting a leave it there forever.

About the Tea; I agree with fescue_planter about the poor quality of most bagged compost. No harm done though. In the future use either Homemade compost or high quality compost from a nursery/supplier for best results.

Thank you all for the replies! I had actually SORT OF started coming to the same conclusion this morning. I went out and took a really good look, and I now think it was a case of me not paying close enough attention before the tea application. I did leave one little "control area" unsprayed and didn't notice the yellowing there, but I'm not calling that a hard fact right now. Need to watch it some more over the coming days.

I now think that what I'm seeing is not only "winter leftover", but an ongoing process of my grass greening up and dying off at the same time. Most of what I was calling "thatch" in the back yard actually seems to be more of a "top coat" of dead material than something going all the way down to the soil level. I do think there's a thatch issue in the front yard still (it is much taller/thicker/spongy than in the back), but it's the back where I'm noticing the yellowing now.

Something else that I've noticed for quite a while that I didn't mention in my first post was that we have a small dog who is very lazy about going outside to do her business. She'll make it anywhere from 0 to 15 feet off the back porch, but typically doesn't venture out into the rest of the yard. "Her" patch of grass around the porch is by far the best plot of grass in my yard. No thatch, no endless web of runners, beautiful deep green... Exactly what I want the rest of the yard to be. I purposely left this area of soil out of my mix that I sent in for soil testing, to hopefully get an unskewed idea of what the other 95% of the yard needs.

I do concede that the rest of the yard may be starving. I've just been afraid to go out and fertilize again for fear of that being part of the problem that got me here in the first place! I'm really hoping that the soil test results show up any day now... I suppose since it would be a slow release organic that doesn't also turn around and kill my new microbe friends that it probably would be ok to make an application... Should I maybe do a fractional application now and then try to true it up once the results are in?

I took some pics this morning to show some of the bad spots up close, the dog's good spot, and the yard as a whole... They are at http://www.photosbyjasonsmith.com/lawn (or the link at the bottom of this message) if it would be of any use in helping me plan a course of action (fungal vs. starving). There are some very close-up pics in the Apr 23 folder.

I'll go look a little harder for some better compost too... Was going to try to repeat an application pretty regularly (weekly-ish) for a month or two (as long as it didn't all die off after the first one!)

Again, I sincerely appreciate everyone's thoughts and taking the time to read through all of this!

Jason

Here is a link that might be useful: My sad lawn pictures

After looking at your pics, I take back what I said about giving your lawn a feeding this weekend.
I would give it a feeding TODAY!

I've just been afraid to go out and fertilize again for fear of that being part of the problem that got me here in the first place!

With feed grains your not applying fertilizer, technically speaking. Your applying a food source for your soil microbes. In turn the microbes will provide your lawn with the nutrients it needs.

When was the last time you fertilized?

I can't tell from the photos, but it looks as if your mowing too low. My lawn is cut @ 4.25" (measured from the ground to the bottom on my mowers cutting deck) and would be dam near the height as those landscape bricks in your pics. (click on my user name)

Also, your lawn mower blade needs to be sharpened. The blades of grass appear to be shredded in the close up photos. Sharp mower blades are an extremely important part of lawn care. A leaf cut by a sharp mower blade will heal faster and require less water than a leaf torn by a dull blade.

Thanks skoot for the solidified diagnosis. :) I will go on a scavenger hunt for some alfalfa pellets & soybean meal asap.

Yeah, I was noticing the torn blades this morning too. I started using a lawn service for mowing this year to be sure that it stayed cut on a regular basis... I'll neither confirm or deny that it may have gone a little longer than it needed to occasionally last year, but I wanted to take that out of the equation. I'll get 'em to sharpen up. They did cut close this past time to get some more of the dead material chopped up. They normally do 4" though.

I just looked at the link to your page/story. WOW. That is absolutely beautiful! I am very very very impressed (and jealous!). I hope by next year I can have something to be proud of!

Stopped off at a couple of the local garden centers in search of compost, alfalfa, and soybean meal. Struck out on the latter two, but picked up some compost by Lady Bug. Started my next batch o' tea this evening and can say (unprofessionally) that this appears to be a superior product. The Lowes flavor had a texture much closer to mulch. Lady Bug's is much more like potting soil.

Going to try the local Co-Op tomorrow for "meal" shopping. Hopefully they'll have something... Not sure where else to look localy. Not a lot of garden shops in town. May have to do a road trip....

Where do you live? Texas I assume, but there are differences between Brownsville and Dalhart, El Paso and Orange. It makes a huge difference.

The only time I've seen thatch in St Aug was in a lawn that was watered daily. St Aug can grow completely above the surface of the ground if it gets enough moisture. When you start backing off on the water you have to be extremely careful, because the roots are mostly above the soil surface. Eventually the watering schedule you need is once a month for the winter and once a week for the hottest part of summer. The hard part is to get your roots to the ground and not kill the grass while you're doing it.

You were absolutely right not to dethatch. Preferably stop the raking, too.

Have you read the Organic Lawn Care FAQ over on the Organic Gardening forum? One thing you have hinted at is you are trying to apply your knowledge of chemical fertilizing to organic materials. You are going to have to forget everything you knew and start to relax. A couple things come to mind:

1. Forget about NPK and start thinking in terms of protein and maybe carbohydrates. Compost tea has no protein in it except for the protein in the bodies of the microbes and any left over protein from the undigested corn you put in it. These are important in the theory, but in the amounts you are getting from tea, they are not important in quantity.

2. Organic fertilizers can be applied any day of the year; any time of day; rain, drought, shade, or shine. They can be mixed with each other and mixed with other organic materials. They can be over applied by 100% or more without damage to the turf (you may get some smell, so that's mainly why the rates are set where they are).

3. The grain type organic fertilizers take a full 3 weeks to decompose to the point where you see significant greening. Any ground or pelletized animal feed type of grain can be your fertilizer. Corn, wheat, milo, cottonseed, soy, alfalfa, coffee, mung, rice, flax, canola, or any other ground up seed, nut, or bean will work. They all have protein.

While it is great that you are following an organic plan, the best things you can do to enhance the look of your lawn and minimize the work that goes into it is to water infrequently and mow at the highest setting on your mower. Not the next-to-highest setting, but all the way up. There is never a reason to mow St Augustine lower than the highest setting...unless your spouse forces you and then you are only allowed to lower it one notch ;-) Water is critically important to St Aug because it has no warm season dormancy like bermuda and zoysia have. St Aug will die out if it dries out. That's why you have to be careful working your thatch out and getting roots into the ground.

The best/least expensive place to find grains is a Farm/Livestock Feed store. Call around, prices vary.

I hope by next year I can have something to be proud of!

It will happen, be patient. St.Augustine is a tough grass and it recovers quickly when properly maintained. Be sure to ask many question along the way. If problems do arise, come back here for help

Hi dchall, I'm over in College Station.

No, I hadn't found the FAQ yet (I don't think so anyway... Read so much lately!), but I will certainly go hunt it down.

On my first couple of posts, I was definitely fixated on NPK... Within a couple of minutes of my reply wondering if I should wait for the soil test, I found an article that turned on the protein/carbs light for me though exactly along the lines of what you are saying.

Although the light is on, it's flickering a little still though.... :) I see time after time where people are comparing the NPK of grains/meals. My current assumption is that the NPK of grains is still relevant b/c the microbes I'm trying to feed w/ protein/carbs are releasing it into the soil as they work on digesting the grain (along with lawn clippings, etc.)... So I may still have a little brain fog, but I'll keep researching and put NPK on the mental back burner.

I homebrew beer and there is a hops shortage this year, so I decided to plant some several weeks back. I dug up a new planter along the side of the house where I was seeing the yellowing the most. The grass is pretty well rooted. Not terribly deep, but certainly not above ground. (That weekend I would have been happy to have had such a bad problem that all of my roots were in a thatch layer!!! My back still hurts from removing all that grass!). So I do have room for improvement on the root depth, but I THINK that I have caught on to all of this in enough time to not be as bad off as I could have been and can continue to wean it off of water. I had reduced watering last year to about an inch per week, but I did it cold turkey. I've turned off the automatic sprinklers several weeks ago and am trying to just water when the soil is drying now.

On the homebrew topic, I read last night that spent grain (barley) is high in protein (but most of the carbs are pulled out in the brew process). I sometimes spread those out on the lawn (blindly thinking "this decays, it's probably good for the lawn"). I'll have to start doing that more regularly. I don't make enough to cover the whole lawn, but it's nice to learn that it is a safe supplement.

Well, the yard just got it's first helping of organic fertilizer!

I went to the local Coop today and wound up finding that they make a mix there that I decided to try. They don't give proportions, but the ingredients are:

Alfalfa Meal
Feather Meal
Animal Protein Products Sugarcane Molasses
Muriate of Potash

That wound up making a 6-1-2 mix (if I cared about that kind of thing any more... ;) )

Think that's livable? It was priced very nicely at $14.99 / 40 lb sack and had been pre-mixed before being pelletized. I applied about 20 lbs / 1000 sq ft.

#@*$%^!!!!

Just learned that innocent sounding "muriate of potash" is potassium chloride and not good for the microbe friends I'm trying to make. Sigh..........

Maybe I should just pave over my lawn and paint it green........

Just learned that innocent sounding "muriate of potash" is potassium chloride

Dont worry about it. That small amount of muriate of potash is not going to be detrimental to your microbes. Over time it might cause some damage, but not this one time.

If they are mixing there own, why not ask if they can leave it out for you? Or suggest sulfate of potash instead.

Thx skoot. I'm just mad at myself.

I should have gone over there when I had more time. Tried to do it during lunch and wound up having a co-worker join me at the last minute for food. It was the first time I had been there and they're at the far other end of town from where we work.

They wound up having a very large lawn & garden section and I got side tracked looking at everything else (kid in a candy store!). There was a big line at the feed section of the store, so I settled for this instead of what I went over there for.

On the plus side, I think they're going to be my favorite new lawn & garden shop. I just need to plan a little better next time. :)

Once cut correctly, watered correctly, and fed correctly, St Augustine is a grass that will reward you handsomely. I have a feeling that within the next 30-45 days, you are going to be proudly showing us photos of your *beautiful* St Aug lawn.

Carla

Honestly, I'll be happy if I can wind up this year's growing season with some optimism that next year will be a dramatic difference.

It took time for me to get it into this condition, so I understand that it will take some time to undo. I certainly would be elated to see huge improvements in the 30 - 45 day range, but I'll take what I can get!

Thank you all again for your guidance and patience with another newbie!

+many on the don't worry about the potash. After all the pesticides used on the sugar cane, what's a little muriate of potash? :-)

There's nothing wrong with animal protein products. Heck, they have great nitrogen levels, decay fast, but stink in larger amounts.

If I were comfortable with it and there were a slaughterhouse nearby, I wouldn't mind applying dried offal. Because of the stench and likelihood of getting bacteria there that could infect me (not to mention mad cow disease), I wouldn't.

You might be on to a new way to keep the door-to-door salesmen away.............. :)

Yeah, yeah.... Lesson learned. Let's just say that I'm just baby-stepping into organics now... Don't want to shock the lawn into a chemical withdrawal!

You can use both at once or double the organics if you feel like it. Just don't double the synthetics.