Should i plant zoysia

It's best to plant Zoysia grass in late spring to early summer. This varies for different geographic areas because the deciding factor is temperature. You should wait to plant until after the last frost, but don't wait until extremely hot temperatures.

Ideally, you should plant when daily temperatures are consistently in the 70s. Also plant at least 60 days before the first fall frost. When planting Zoysia grass, you can start from Zoysia seed, sod, or plugs.

Since Zoysia can take some time to grow, most prefer beginning with sod or plugs. First, measure your lawn so you know how much you'll need of the materials you choose.

There are many online tools and apps today to help determine the size of your property. Since Zoysia grass does best in acidic soil with a pH of 5. Test your soil's pH level a few weeks before you want to plant. Depending on the results, you may need to till recommended nutrients into the top layer of your soil. Use a spreader to evenly distribute Zoysia grass seed around your property.

Make sure to keep seeding consistent and to not apply too much or too little. Spreading too dense a layer of seeds can lead to overcrowding and improper germination. Spreading too little can lead to a sparse lawn. Lightly tamp the seeds to ensure a good soil contact. These seeds will take about three weeks to germinate if cared for properly.

During this phase, it's important to keep soil moist, though not oversaturated. Once your grass is established, you can cut back to a more regular watering routine. It's also important not to mow the grass until it has reached at least 2.

Bare spots can happen in your lawn for a variety of reasons, from pet urine to pests. To patch these areas, you'll first want to cut out the dead, discolored grass. Then rake the top inch or two of the soil to loosen it and prepare it for germination. From there, use steps three and four above to regrow your Zoysia grass in the bare spot. Few people know it is also an agressive, invasive weed. Does anyone have a sure-fire way of killing the Bermuda without harming the zoysia?

The two grasses are genetically related, so I would love to hear any success stories. I lnve in the mid-section of the Berkshire county in western Massachusetts.

Is it a good idea to use the Zoysia? Only you can decide that. It will turn golden brown during the winter and if you only use it in part of your yard it looks very odd.

In the north? Koko, if you live in the North, I would plant Kentucky Bluegrass. Fescue would be my second choice.

But, if you opt for Kentucky blue, be sure to use a blend that contains fescues and fine bladed rye so you get fast germination or the weeds will come before the grass. They deliver for Each pallet is Sq ft. Oh My neighbor let Dallas Grass take over his yard. Fescue was no match.

That nasty weed blew into my yard and fought all summer long to get Zoysia and Bermuda to grow. It was sooooo slow. Throwing Zoysia seed in his yard when he goes to run errands this sumner……. I live in Rhode Island and friends have it. I was sold on it for one reason. Well I live 60 miles East of Atlanta, and had a tornado hit my house and put a large tree on my roof and when they removed it the big equipment tore up my yard.

I completely killed everything left, fescue and weeds. I brought in top soil spread it and leveled it and then put down zoysia sod. I took hold quickly and looked great, it is now Dec. There are several kinds of zoysia and you need to pick what is best for your yard.

I have partial shade, large trees, and the grass is doing well under them. The fescue that I had was never ever good for long after it ws planted and may have looked good for a few months, but then thinned out, died or was washed away by heavy rains.

I have centipede grass in my back yard and it also does great. Fescue has to be re-seeded twice a year and never looks great for any length of time. I have had no trouble with the zousia spreading, but the centipede really spreads every year, since I have about 2.

I built a new house on an acre of land in Florida about 5 years ago. I did my research and decided that empire zoysia would be the best grass for me to put down. That was a huge mistake! Although zoysia is very nice looking when it is perfect, getting it to look perfect is a constant battle. Number one they forgot to mention that zoysia will not grow at all unless it is fertilized.

It needs fertilizer every other month to look and be healthy or it will look like crap. I put down 75 pallets of it and i really wish i could get rid of it. If I had put down bahia or st augustine and used this much fertilizer my lawn would be beautiful. My zoysia lawn looks bad even though I spent about a thousand dollars on fertilizer this year.

Either the grass is getting too much shade, or you might have a problem with nematodes. Mike, Much time was spent reseeding, fertilizing and watering fescue grass. Stepped into Zoysia grass lawn in Atlanta one year and feel in love with it. Our lawn is now zoysia. Would rather have brown zoysia grass in winter when almost all trees and plants rest than in summer when trees and most most are green and blooming..

I live in sanger California in the middle of the state, vary hot in summer. I have a small back yard, filtered sun light, will zoysia work for me? Mike— I grew up in Georgia where the best lawns were Zoysia, and I love the brown look in winter. In my opinion it looks better with all the berries and dark reds and browns in the winter garden and just looks more appropriate for the time of year. And nobody has mentioned this— zoysia feels warm and inviting to walk across in cold weather.

Green grass feels chilly by comparison. I just mentioned this in case anyone feels like going outside barefoot in January, it is somewhat more plausible if you have a Zoysia lawn. I live in SW FL. I have planted a couple of plug flats of zoysia grass and going to add 3 more flats. I have a variety of grasses and weeds in my ward and hoping that the zoysia will overtake all of the other grasses. It does seem to take a while and plenty of watering to get started. But I am hoping that the time and effort to get it going will be outweighed by a durable, weed free yard.

The tan color from its winter dormancy was hardly seen because of all the snow covering it the past 2 winters! Low water needs — the price of water if climbing and will continue to climb.

Once established, Zoysia needs very little watering. This saves our water for more important things, and keeps money in the homeowners pockets. First thing I have to say is zoysia is freaking awesome. Does it really matter if it turns golden during the winter? Especially considering Bermuda does the same thing yet nobody every complains about Bermuda turning brown. I have a Super-Sod near me and they sell Zenith Zoysia in seed and sod.

Zenith Zoysia is Zoysia japonica Steud. It did awesome until I had to have a drainage issue fixed and they tore it all up with heavy equipment. Fast forward to about I built a huge house on a 2 acre lot in a neighborhood on the lake near Charlotte, NC.

I did a lot of the work myself and acted as the GC. It was a lot of fun. I was low on money so I cheaped out and went with fescue. Once I had some reserved built back up, I decided to convert back to zoysia in stages. I decided to go with Zenith Zoysia since I could use sod and seed. I started with a sq ft location and tilled and amended. I planted zenith zoysia seed and kept it wet for about a month straight.

Barely made a change in my water bill. After that, I gradually cut back on water until I was watering about once per week. Once well established, I only watered when stressed. It took about 4 months to be mostly filled in and thick like a carpet.

The bare spots filled in the following summer. I seeded my backyard the same way but used seed that was a little over a year old.

They say the germination rate drops significantly but I found university tests that showed it was still near the same rate as new seed. I never have to put down any weed control or crabgrass preventer. It definitely is weedless like advertised. If you seed, you will get a lot of crabgrass as well because you are watering in a way that promotes crabgrass germination.

Just mow it low as soon as you have something to mow even if it just looks like weeds. If you let the weeds get high, the zoysia seedlings will grow very slowly.

Mature zoysia will send out runners several feet long over the course of a season. Who cares if it turns golden…Fescue thins out considerably and has a lot of brown during the winter and I think the consistent golden of zoysia is much more desirable than the sparse look of winter fescue.

Also, fescue cannot handle the heat in the south including the Charlotte area. I have a house with Bermuda just down the road and even though it gets thick like a carpet, it gets full of weeds and crabgrass and invades everything.

Zoysia is so much better. When I first wrote about Zoysia grass I had no idea that I would find so many raving fans for this grass. Thank you for sharing your story about it. Our house came with Zoysia grass when we bought it. I absolutely hate it.

As I am writing this on May 12th our grass is Still not green and will be back to looking like hay by mid-October, so 4 months of green grass and garbage the rest.

The worst thing about it is how difficult it is to kill. Three rounds of Roundup and fingers crossed are needed, then dig it up or it Will come back. The history of the grass in my neighborhood is that someone three doors up did his lawn in this stuff in the 60s and it has spread into every neighboring yard and kept going. I agree. Zosia is awful. I live in New York State and this grass is ugly and prickly dry dormant gold 9 months of the year.

Horribly invasive. I spend days pulling it out of my flower beds and trying to keep it from spreading to my neighbors nice green lawns. I would trade it for a yard full of grubs any day. Zoysia is not as hard to get rid of as the above story indicates.

In fact it is relatively easy. Here in Arkansas, all you have to do is bring in a small bunch of Army worms and in or two days, they will eat it completely to the root, effectively killing it. I have a large dead patch in my yard where they did just that last September. Also, over the years, I have lost several large patches due to ice and snow, which, if setting on the turff, for a few days, can also wipe it out.

So, it is not that difficult to get rid of. I order 75 plugs, and since my yard is small, I expected it would fill to cover over time. As I live in California, the shipment was held in quarantine for a while before I reveived it, so a small percentage dried out.

After following instructions to the letter, I plugged the surviving plugs and watered as usual. Withing about a month, there were absolutely no survivors, so it was a total waste of money for. Very much unimpressed. My Bermuda on the other hand is always full of weeds even with preemergent and constant weed spraying. I live in central Texas, and I hate the look of both the usual Bermuda and St.

Although they did stay green in the summer without much water, when they got kind of dry, the blades would curl along the sides so that they looked like clusters of some kind of desert spikes.. I pulled them out after a few months. There was a small patch of Buffalo grass at the back of our Bermuda-in-sun, St. Augustine-in-shade back yard when we bought our current home. Over the past four years first two of which it hardly rained at all , the Buffalo has crowded out the Bermuda in more than half the sunny areas, and is much better-looking, and requires less water in summer.

This grass is genetically modified. It is unknown how this GMO product could affect other plants in your yard or potentially your edible garden.

Surprising that no one in this thread was concerned about genetically modified contamination in their yards. To me that is a huge stretch. Many Bermuda grass varieties are not GMO but were produced by being bombarded with gamma radiation and allowed to grow. Those which exhibited desirable traits were commercialized. What most of you up north do not realize is that down south we have few choices.

I have been through it all. I have tried blue grass, Merion, creeping red and other fescues, Emerald Zoysia various Tifton bermudas. The other choice is a horrible clumping wide bladed orchard pseudo grass called KY My neighbor seeded this year after year and I spent hour after hour weeding it out of my gorgeous Emerald Zoysia, During the winter my zoysia looks like the thick lush carpet cut pile in my home.

Under my trees in the back I am trying creeping thyme.. One could do what some did in Denver circa by just paving green concrete over the yard.. I appreciate your comments and you are right.

My neighbor has had zoysia for years, and I have cut a few times for them. And it has invaded 3 neighboring lawns, which were beautiful lawns to begin with, but now look like crap, especially in the fall and winter. I planted cavalier zoysia in the backyard of my Austin home. I chose cavalier ecause it was the only super soft zoysia I found visited the agricultural extension and stepped on the patches..

Whereas emerald is a little bluer and preferred by some, my 2 year old had a super plush, lovely, Kelly green cushion under her swing set to tumble onto. Live in the Ft. Myers, FL area. Sodded the yard one year ago with zoysia. You will need edging if you want to keep it out of your planters.

This ideal timing, if complied with, will help farmers avoid supplying an excess of nutrients that plants cannot use anyway and may become contaminants in the environment instead. Honey is also being used in beer and other beverage like teas and is readily becoming a hugely useful product that puts a lot of beekeepers back in the spotlight to produce high quality honey. For years, used oil was just about free from fishermen and truck fleets.

Forgot about them when I moved away for 5 years. I realized it was very slow in the Boston area since it will grow fast only June-August. I bought sod. She has a lawn chemical company and waters like crazy. Everyone is right that it is thick and strong and goes brown early and is late to green up. What we hate it that it creep into all of your flower beds and gardens and is extremely difficult to get rid of.

If you spade an area, every little piece that breaks off grows more and it goes in long runners under cement borders. Live in Western PA and moved into a house with Zoysia creeping through most of the backyard. Hated how it looked most of the year so decided to get rid of it. After must research I tackled my project last September. Here were the steps I took:. Sprayed lawn with Roundup waited a week and sprayed again 2. I tried to rack up as much of the dead grass as possible.

Threw seed down Penn State Mix and covered with mushroom manure. After having absolutely no growth due to poor soil contact, I had to take more action. In the fall I rented a roto-tiller and tilled all of the dead grass.

I collected bags of dead grass and roots from the Zoysia grass the root system is insane. I planted grass and got a pretty good growth this time around. One piece of advice is to rent a roller after tilling the grass.

If anyone wants to tackle this project and is looking for more advice let me know. It takes a lot of water to get started but it is much finer and tighter, stays green most of the year round here. It is tight enough that a lot of the pine needles, when falling, will stick straight up in the grass. It is almost easier to pull the weeds than spray. I have a half acre lot that I mow at about 3 inches. It is the best looking grass in the neighborhood. I have had it in about 3 years.

It is invasive into unedged areas. I HATE it! Had to read so many comments to find a couple for California. Seems like it should be good here with all the drought. Thanks for the advice. I read your article on zoysia grass, and the comments from your readers. I thought your article was spot on, based on your research.

By the same token, I totally agree with your readers. I have had Zoysia grass in my yard for about 19 years, and it has been wonderful; however, in the past couple of years, the weeds have been invading it. I have been pulling the weeds in the spring, but it seems like more come back the following year.

Do you or your readers have any suggestions on how I can return my zoysia to its weed- free lushness? People dont look at the beauty of lush summer grass they have bad things to say when they dont like something.

Georgia is the worst state to deal with landscapers and having zoysia grass makes it times worse because these backwards landscapers wont do the rye grass or dye it. Zoysia grass was the biggest mistake i ever made next to buying a house in georgia. Whatever you do dont buy this grass unless you want to have a miserable life looking at golden brown grass in the wintr this grass should not be on the market in Georgia but nobody can find bermuda grass either down here so the snake oil companys say take it because it is all we have.

The Tifton bermudas brown in the winter also. I have tried test plots of numerous varieties. Look at the golf greens. Likely they over seed with annual rye.

Horrible is in the eyes of the beholder. The perfect solution for winter brown. A whole lot of Bermuda sod is grown in Georgia. I love my Zoysia! I live just outside Atlanta. I echo the comments from many others about Zoysia; soft carpet like feel, tolerates drought better but not completely , self heals bare spots, chokes out weeds better.

Our 1st home we had the front yard sodded with Zoysia. In our current home we actually used Zoysia seed. I saw an ad in the local power EMC magazine and did not believe it. I called the company and sure enough, there is a seeded version available. It is called Zenith Zoysia, and very similar to the Meyers Zoysia that was at our 1st home. The seed does need good heat to germinate and takes a long time to germinate. I actually called the farm where the seed was harvested as it was taking so long for it to germinate.

They were very nice and said because we had a period of cool weather it would take about another week before it started to germinate. Sure enough, it started to germinate just like they said. It was over 3 weeks to get it to germinate.

The 1st year it filled in nicely, but by the end of the 2nd year it was awesome. Me neighbors started calling our yard the ballpark because of the grass. We get bare spots because we have 3 dogs and get the burn areas.

The pre-emergent stops the Zoysia from spreading. Weed-B-Gone works great to knock out any weeds that do come up in the week areas, just be careful not to use it around the trip line of any trees or shrubs. We almost lost a cherry tree as we got the Weed-B-Gone into the drip line.

The severe drought we had a few years back also caused major stress on the grass. It is drought tolerant, but there is a limit to how much it will withstand. The nice thing is that it will tell you it needs water. The leaves will start to close up and the color will change. If you can water immediately deeply at this stage, it recovers well. During the severe drought there were watering restrictions, so I was not able to water as needed.

Some areas actually did die out, but they have recovered with no work on my part. The great thing about it is if it does die in some spots, you can take plugs from the good areas and put them in those areas. Also a zoysia lover. We are in Northern MS and I actually started my zoysia from seed! I bought the seed at my local co-op started with one pound spread over about a half acre. I started in the hot part of summer with drought, so I had to water it all day by moving a sprinkler around for 6 weeks until it came up.

The next year I went back to buy more seed and the co-op sales person could not believe I had actually got it to grow. I finally found two more pounds of seed, installed an irrigation system covering 2 acres and for 16 years we have had a well established almost weed free lawn that only needs cutting about every 3 weeks. I like to burn it off in March. It seems to make it exceptionally green and kills any winter weeds. My only complaints the zenith variety we have is not very shade tolerant like the newer varieties, but it can be started from seed with a great deal of work.

Sounds like Zenith Zoysia or whatever brand name they sold it under. This is from personal experience. I had some left over so I put it in an area under trees that gets a lot of shade and it has spread and filled in very well. We have 4 seasons—hot summers with periods of drought and periods of heavy rain, this winter was cold and snowy, low of 6 degrees, more than 4 feet of snow. Last frost is usually March, first frost is usually October. The seeds were slow to germinate and spread.

There were lots of bare spots the first couple years. Weeds and volunteer cool season grass grew throughout the lawn the first year. Over the next four growing seasons, the Zoysia slowly filled in the bare spots, and choked out weeds and other grass. Now, after 5 growing seasons, the lawn is a solid carpet, thick and beautiful. The kids from next door, whose dad spends hours of pampering and thousands of dollars on his cool season lawn, love to come to our yard to play barefoot.

My yard is scratchy. My Zoysia lawn care routine: first thing in the spring—weed and feed lightly; then cut it with a mulching lawn mower at 2 inches every 2 or 3 weeks during the summer; let the clippings stay on the lawn. No watering, no insecticide, no fungicide, no heavy fertilizing, no special chemicals, nothing.

It is an emerald green from the time soil temperature hits 60 degrees until a week or two after the first frost May to November. Seeding a New Lawn Prepare the soil by loosening to a depth of 1—2 inches. Conduct a soil test to be sure your soil has the proper nutrients it needs for a healthy lawn. The pH should be between 5. Apply fertilizer and soil amendment at the recommended rates. If you are unable to conduct a soil test, apply a complete lawn fertilizer according to the recommended rates on the packages.

Work the soil amendment and fertilizer evenly into the soil, then rake the soil surface smooth to give the seed an ideal bed in which to establish healthy roots.

Sow the grass seed by evenly spreading according to the recommended seeding rates using a drop or broadcast spreader. Adequate light will ensure faster germination. Keep the area well watered until the seeds germinate and the seedlings have grown sufficiently to establish a lawn, then water as needed. If necessary, thinly apply a mulch product to prevent erosion of the seed while still allowing adequate light to reach the seed.

I underestimated how much I would dislike brown grass. With all the other bare branches in the winter, the brown lawn looked even worse. Once March in NC hits, the dormant grass starts waking up. Below is the Zoysia in the spring time just beginning to green up:. After all is said and done I give our Zoysia grass a B-. The old dirt backyard is now mostly filled with thick green grass. Our concerns we used to have about excess sun and drought killing our grass are non existent. There are areas that get heavy foot traffic though that look damaged and trampled.

There are still weeds — although not nearly as much as before — but they are still there. Having our kids play in the backyard so much is a good problem to have, so I try not to obsess over the areas of grass damage they inadvertently cause.

I should have used a landscaper that was more experienced specifically with Zoysia to start out with, and I encourage you to take the time to do the same! It would have helped our cheap dirt and added beneficial nutrients for the new Zoysia sod. It grows okay in the current rocky soil, but our new landscaper is very adamant that this should have been done for healthier grass.

I think if topsoil was added the Zoysia would be less stressed in areas with heavy foot traffic! Bottom line- use an experienced landscaper who has worked with Zoysia a lot to save yourself a headache later. Our Bluestone Patio.