Tall Fescue

Over the past two months my winter dormant St. Augustine, the preferred lawn grass for my area, has gradually been coming back to life. Who doesn't love to see their brown lawn gradually becoming a beautiful shade of green? I noticed about eight weeks ago that I had a couple mounds that appeared very grass-like (not like your typical weed varieties) popping up in the lawn. Never-the-less, it was not St. Augustine and not Bermuda or Bahia, so I hoped my weed and feed would get rid of it. A couple weeks after we applied weed and feed, these little dark green mounds had not decreased in number. In fact, they were starting to take over. The mounds were very dense, and unlike my other weeds which just seemed to sit on top of my St. Augustine, close inspection revealed they were actually choking out the runners of the new Augustine growth. We have the lawn mowed regularly, but the mounds were strikingly dark green and did not match the coloring of the lawn. It wasn't something I was willing to let go and leave in the yard. Once I determined they weren't going to respond to neither a post-emergent nor a pre-emergent herbicide, I figured my only bet from keeping it from spreading and causing more dense mounds that would continue to choke out my St. Augustine would be to dig them up. The yard literally looked like someone had planted random mounds of monkey grass all over. So dig them up I did. It was no small effort! Well, ever since I dug all them up, I can tell you the yard looks SO much better. But in my mind, I really wanted to identify what these dark mounds of grass were. From what I've been able to find online, my culprit was tall fescue. Imagine my surpise to learn that in milder climates further north, entire lawns are made from fescue (and look gorgeous from what I've seen online, I might add). Evidently once we get into our hot Texas weather in the summer, the fescue would not have stayed nearly as dense or healthy. But since we've enjoyed a much milder winter/spring than usual, it's evidently had a chance to grow. I probably could have left it in the yard and it eventually would have been controlled as the temperatures rise, but from a strictly cosmetic standpoint, I am so glad I dug them up. Older, wiser gardeners remind me that patience is a gardener's best friend. I clearly haven't mastered that virtue yet!

Here is a picture (not from my yard) of tall fescue. In my yard, my new St. Augustine grass is a bright spring green/yellow color as it comes in. These mounds were very, very dense(like monkey grass, as I mentioned) and not at all the same color as the rest of the lawn. It really stood out from the street. For my impatient eye, they had to go!