How to Plant Zoysia Grass

How to Plant Zoysia Grass in Houston?

Zoysia grass is an incredibly beautiful grass that does well in the Houston area.  It is shade tolerant, it’s slower-growing so you might not have to mow as often, and it has a wonderful texture and feel.  So how do we plant Zoysia grass at our farm?  Houston Grass South Owner Michael Romine answers that question in this video.

Summary of Michael’s Video on How to Plant Zoysia Grass

How to plant Zoysia grass? I would say that planting Zoysia grass is similar to other grasses that we have out here at the farm.

People may have heard of putting the plugs out, the four-inch plugs, and letting it spread. All the grasses will absolutely spread eventually. However, the only way that you’re going to end up happy with the result is solid sodding.

For all of the grasses that we carry, including the Zoysia, you want to put the 16 by 24-inch pieces out, and you want to butt the pieces up as tight as you can. There are no seeds or anything like that for Zoysia grass, as far as I know. So that’s not really an alternative, and the only other option would be to do the plugging it.

Will Plugging Zoysia Grass Save Me Money?

I can understand people’s thinking. You’re going to spread it further, you’re on a budget, and so on. But the amount of money and time that you’re going to spend fighting the weeds in between the plugs, for probably a year or so, is just so much more than what you’d save.  You’re going to wipe out your savings in a real big hurry if you try to plug Zoysia.

How to Plant Zoysia Grass
How to Plant Zoysia Grass

There are all sorts of issues. That’s the way our farm does it. That’s the way all farms plant grass. Because they’re talking about planting 10, 20, 30 acres at a time of grass. The farms also have the equipment and the licenses, and chemicals that it takes to be able to treat these…get the weeds out of it and clean it up.

It also should be noted that Zoysia is the slowest growing grass of all the grasses that we carry, and to my knowledge, it’s the slowest growing grass that you’d typically find in the Houston area.  Zoysia takes an extremely long time to grow and fill in the bare spots between plugs.

If you put any size piece of grass out and, say, you lay the St. Augustine here and the Zoysia here in a patch, the Zoysia would take just absolutely forever to spread out. Its slow growth habit is a good thing once you’ve got it out there and you’re not having to mow it as frequently as the rest of them. But if you plug the Zoysia, it would take a very long time to cover the dirt up. That’s something that should be considered as well.

Houston Grass Delivers the Best Grass Sod in Houston

Our grass sod comes from our family farm in Bay City so we know the care that goes into growing our grass and the quality of every pallet and piece of grass that we sell.  We’ve been in the grass business since 1981 so we know the grass varieties that do well in the Houston climate and we know the best grass varieties for the requirements of your project.

We offer two varieties of St. Augustine grass — Raleigh St. Augustine and Palmetto St. Augustine.  We also offer two varieties of Bermuda grass — Tifway 419 Bermuda grass and TexTurf 10 Bermuda grass.  Our medium-bladed, easy-care Zoysia grass is Palisades Zoysia.  Our more shade-tolerant, fine-bladed Zoysia grasses are Cavalier Zoysia and Emerald Zoysia.