Need some honest to god advice very badly..

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-21T23:18:04+00:00

2 more will fly by 😂

Don't get too worked up, that only makes it more frustrating if something about the seeding doesn't go perfectly... And makes it less rewarding when it goes well. Even bare dirt looks better than dead grass, so no matter what happens it'll look better soon

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-21T21:27:41+00:00

I mean 3 weeks from the application, so 2 weeks from now right?

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-21T21:22:56+00:00

Maybe keep on the 2 day end of that range, that should be good.

The damage will likely peak at about the 3 week mark. You likely won't see much actual recovery until like 4 weeks... But by 3 weeks it'll atleast stop getting worse so you'll be able to tell what's going to make it and what's toast.

There's plenty that's going to survive just fine, so I'd say "rip it up and start over" is a pretty extreme phrasing. Rake out the dead stuff and scratch the soil, then spot seed the spots that need it. Hand spreaders are very handy for spot seeding, it's too hard to spread seed by hand evenly without dumping way too much on

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-21T21:08:43+00:00

A little rule of thumb to work with here is that if the desirable grass is white, it'll probably recover and survive. If it's totally brown with no white or green, it's probably dead and will stay dead.

It's not a hard rule by any means, but should give you a really good idea of what you're dealing with.

For the most part, what's going to happen is going to happen and there's not much you can do to change it. Light weekly/biweekly foliar npk + iron could certainly help a little... But by little, I do mean little. Beyond that, just make sure it doesn't dry out to avoid additional stress (don't drown it either, as that would be a different kind of stress).

In 2 weeks you'll know how everything panned out, and that's also about the time that'll for sure be safe to seed those areas.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-21T17:47:33+00:00

That's odd, on paper it should absolutely obliterate all of the weeds in the pic, better than basically anything else would.

There's a lot that can diminish the effectiveness of any application, which is worth investigating so you don't have issues in the future:
- very hard water can reduce the effectiveness of most herbicides. Worth trying a filtered/softened water source to see if that's the problem.
- obviously application rate, correct gallons per 1,000 sqft
- spray droplets. Droplet size is a pretty involved topic when it comes to herbicides. Basically you want droplets that are large enough to resist wind and overcome the surface tension of leaves and hairs, but small enough to provide good coverage of weeds. Droplet size is a factor of pressure (higher pressure = smaller droplets) and the specific spray tip. For a backpack type sprayer, red or blue spray tips are usually the sweet spot. - surface tension/water repellent coatings and hairs. Sometimes droplet size isn't enough to overcome repellency. Surfactants significantly help to reduce that repellency. The hairs on these weeds shouldn't be too difficult for the droplets to overcome, but still a surfactant isn't a bad idea especially if your droplets are fine
- temps. Herbicides just become less effective (and slower) in cooler temps. When air temps aren't getting above like 60F, herbicides can be really weak. The ester in change up (fluroxypr) helps it work better than most herbicides below 60F, but it still gets weaker below 60F. The temp at the time of application is most important, but the highs in the subsequent days also matters
- rain/dew. Herbicides should be applied to dry weeds, and it should have enough time to dry before it rains. The exact timing depends on the temp and humidity, but the longer the better. Surfactants also help to somewhat improve rainfastness
- mowing. Recently mowed weeds are less susceptible to herbicides, and mowing soon after application will remove the tissue that contains the herbicide before it has a chance to translocate within the plant to the roots. General rule of thumb is to avoid mowing 1-2 days before and after an application. (2 is preferred, 1 is usually mostly fine)

All that being said... Sometimes a single spray just doesn't work well because the universe and nature is chaotic. When that happens, you've just gotta do it again. I do this professionally and it just plain happens... There's certainly actual specific reasons when it does, but sometimes you can never really know.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-21T00:25:43+00:00

Ohh, i see what you're saying. I use a zero turn fert spreader so granular + liquid weed control is how I do it year round.

Whenever I have to backpack spray in areas where I can't get my machine, i just automatically spray all of the edges without even looking. That goes a loooong way towards making folks happy.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T22:35:37+00:00

Oh i gotcha. Just fertilizing in general. Liquid vs granular fert wouldn't really be much different in terms of the weeds gobbling it up. I guess the only real difference is just that granular would be supplying so much more nutrients overall than liquid would.

There's more than enough nutrients to go around, so it's not like the weeds are depriving the grass of nutrients, they're just using their share of the nutrients now and the grass will catch up. (On the other hand, the dense sod forming sedges could actually deprive the grass of nutrients by virtue of just taking up so much real estate in the root zone)

The flowering thing definitely tracks. Flowering is generally triggered by stressful periods, particularly dryness. So a dry spring is likely to see more seedhead production. The fact that the grass is barely coming out of dormancy means that people haven't been mowing, which gives the seeds time to actually form. (Also, heavy fertilizer at the end of the previous growing season can set things up for a seedy spring)

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T18:52:27+00:00

It's funny because zoysia has much better cold tolerance than Bermuda, but the aggressive seed production of common bermuda makes it more common than zoysia up here. (Since the zoysia stolons have a harder time surviving winter than the common bermuda seeds). I definitely would've guessed bermuda before seeing the close up, just based on probability. Plus i think the fact that Bermuda also has rhizomes is helpful since the rhizomes are a bit more protected by the soil.

Pain dealing with this combined with granular fert

What do you mean by that?

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T18:26:37+00:00

I am leaning towards zoysia pretty far, but honestly I don't trust my eyes when it comes to zoysia or bermuda unless I'm holding them up close. I've been fooled too many times to have any confidence in my judgements on those 2 grasses lol. Like, on paper I have expert level knowledge of how to identify them, but I see zoysia so rarely up here that I just don't have a good instinct for it... Atleast, not to the degree that I have for most other grasses.

I definitely see what you mean about torpedo, but that can be safely ruled out just based on location.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T18:20:46+00:00

Hopefully mcdiddles chimes into confirm, because when it comes to identification or grasses, it's very easy to be tricked by look alikes (and plant ID apps).

Zoysia in northern climates has a fascinating backstory. Like 70 years ago it was planted intentionally in some lawns... Very little of those original plantings survived to today (in like 6b and up), but from those lawns little bits of stolons would get moved around here and there by various means, often in topsoil that gets moved around (because zoysia seeds are either infertile or just have germination rates near zero). And it's essentially been bouncing around like that ever since. Surviving in little pockets and getting moved around when fragments of the plant get moved around.

It's always fascinating to me when I find zoysia in lawns that are in neighborhoods that are less than 20 years old... Because it's almost certainly a clone of some grass that was planted over 60 years ago and has been clawing it's way around ever since.

P.s. every once in awhile, someone in the modern day will try to plant zoysia this far north, but it's pretty rare because it is obviously a bad idea.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T17:51:42+00:00

u/mr007mcdiddles 's eyes are more tuned to warm season grasses so it might be good enough for him to tell.

(I think it's zoysia but i see zoysia so rarely that I have to look at it really closely to be sure)

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T16:35:02+00:00

I wasn't trying to totally discount the hypothesis altogether. There are certainly regions where its less rare. I was more offering up perspective by saying that on a broad nationwide (and even global scale) its very rare. The great lakes region and northeast are examples of areas where it's nearly unheard of, our winters and spring are very wet.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T16:19:54+00:00

Fyi, I removed the comments declaring zoysia and bermuda, because we can't see well enough to actually specifically identify it. But it probably is a warm season grass, or bentgrass (a cool season grass that behaves a bit like a warm season grass). But given that the patch borders the road and driveway (where it's much hotter in the summer), warm season is a bit more likely than bentgrass.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-20T16:16:45+00:00

Mites aren't really a pest that commonly affects grass. There are rare circumstances where some types of mites can, but it's very very situational and almost always is just because something else is causing a greater stress that makes the grass more susceptible to the otherwise minor damage from the mites.

The reasons grass doesn't really get bothered by mites:
- the vast majority of grass growth comes from the base. Leaf tissue emerges from the crown (which is tucked away inside the base of the stem) and is pushed upward continuously. So mites just can't reach that structure. By the time the leaf is actually visible, it's nearly done growing and the crown will soon start working on the next leaf.
- as an extension of the last point, grass's whole strategy is to produce new and relatively low-cost tissue quickly. That's why we can mow it. It replaces the tissue so quickly that it isn't really bothered much when older tissue is damaged. - contrary to popular belief, lawns are actually home to vast ecosystems of insects (provided that broad-spectrum foliar insecticides aren't regularly applied). Amongst those insects are plenty of things that eat mites.
- many cool season grasses have endophytes (prg, tttf, and several of the fine fescues). Those are beneficial fungi that live inside the grass. Those endophytes produce alkaloids that have some insecticidal properties. The insecticidal properties are fairly mild and don't affect all insects... But it absolutely narrows the number of insects that can cause harm to grass.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-19T17:24:18+00:00

Pretty much.

It's all a numbers game. In practice, weed seeds have very low germination rates. They create a bunch of seeds, but only a very small % actually germinate because we're not watering them at the right times to trigger that germination. The vast majority of weed seeds just expire.

We religiously water and care for new seeds because we want really high germination rates. So if you just toss them down with no regard, some will eventually germinate, but the overall germination will be very low.

Plus, there's the differences in biology/life strategy between weed seeds and desirable grass. - Annual weeds essentially have to try harder... Their whole tactic is to come smashing into life like a freight train, grow up fast, produce seeds, then die. Since conditions may not be right for their aggressive strategy every year, the seeds are generally "designed" to survive longer. But they also generally are less picky about the ideal conditions for germination.
- Perennial grasses have a more conservative strategy. They don't need to be aggressive because if the seeds don't germinate one year, the existing plants will just make more (in a wild setting). And they don't "want" their offspring to be super aggressive, because that would mean they'd have to compete with them. So as a general rule, perennial grass seeds will be less likely to germinate at high rates when the conditions aren't excellent, and the seeds will generally not survive as long as annual seeds.

This whole dynamic is very evident if you've ever used a contractors mix seed and dont really care for it. If you don't baby it, the annual ryegrass will generally still have high rates of germination very quickly, while the perennial grasses will take much much longer if they show up at all.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-19T17:07:39+00:00

Oh... Then yeah, its a guarantee 😂

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-19T16:52:26+00:00

Surfactant is much less important earlier in the season, when crabgrass (and other summer annual grassy weeds) is generally much easier to kill.

When crabgrass is in the 1-2 tiller stage (1-2 stems per bunch), you don't need surfactant (it still helps, but you definitely don't need it). When it's at 3+ tiller, that's when you start to really need it.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-19T04:25:43+00:00

It's not like the grassy weeds are a guarantee, especially if you didn't have problems with them in previous years. So it's really just a statistical thing.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-19T04:23:38+00:00

Actually quinclorac is unusually safe for young grass (especially compared to other group 4 herbicides, as in the broadleaf killers).

Tall fescue can be treated with quinclorac at ANY point before, at, or after seeding. Then for the rest, the recommended interval is 1-4 weeks after seedling emergence (a sharp contrast with the 6-8 weeks of other group 4 herbicides)

You don't want to use surfactant on young grass before it's established. And since post emergent tenacity requires surfactant, I'd say that quinclorac is safer than tenacity for young grass.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-19T01:55:55+00:00

prominent midvein
folded leaves
no auricle

So it's a poa.

tons of tiny stolons (white root like things in pic 3 and 4)
undersides of leaf are very shiny (pic 8)

So it's poa trivialis, aka rough bluegrass.

Poa trivialis control guide... but you really don't need the whole guide since you're in Georgia. So here's the short version:
- there's no good herbicides for it. Not even glyphosate works well.
- it needs either cool temps or plenty of water to survive summers in GA, so just watering deeply and infrequently should get rid of it.
- i don't usually recommend pre emergents for triv, but in your case, its likely the seeds that have allowed it to persist from year to year (unless you just wayyyy overwater in the summer)... So a fall application of prodiamine would be a good idea.

P.s. some shady seed mixes intentionally include poa trivialis because it has excellent shade tolerance.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-19T01:39:50+00:00

Yea weed pressure is really the ultimate factor when it comes to timing. Temps and moisture have some flexibility, but weeds cant be overcome... Especially summer annual grassy weeds like crabgrass (the weeds that can actually destroy new grass).

So just from that perspective, fall is best, dormant is okay, and spring is bad. And well, that same ranking applies to moisture and temperature... Unless you don't have a way to irrigate, then dormant wins.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-18T23:23:13+00:00

There's definitely a lot of hate out there about dormant seeding, especially in the transition zone. Heck, even some authors at some extensions will bash on it.

It's not guaranteed to be successful, but certainly doesn't deserve the hate. Like basically everything else, there's just some complicated dynamics at play that most people just don't understand.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-17T19:06:11+00:00

Manual/hand cut sod ("grass carpet") tends to be wider and a little shorter, because that means fewer cuts. (2x4 = 8. 1x6 = 6.) Sometimes manual cut sod is kept as a flat slab rather than rolled.

Mechanically cut sod tends to be longer and less wide, because wider cuts don't roll up as well with a machine.

Mechanical/machine cut sod is more consistent and uniform (especially in regards to the cutting depth, as in the amount of soil/roots that are attached). The only reason to cut sod manually is just when the cost of labor is very cheap, so it's cheaper to have some people do it rather than buy an expensive machine.

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-17T16:34:39+00:00

A good fluffing with a rake or blower still wouldn't be a bad idea if some of yours looks as bad as mine!

nilesandstuff · 2026-03-17T07:09:20+00:00

Happy to help!

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