What Are Shade Tolerant St. Augustine Grasses?

What Are the Shade Tolerant St. Augustine Grasses Suitable for Houston?

Many Houston area neighborhoods are shaded and you’ll need shade tolerant grasses in those areas.  In this video, Michael Romine talks about the shade tolerant St. Augustine grasses adapted for the Houston area.  If you have questions, please call us at 281-431-7441.

Please note that the video mentions TamStar St. Augustine.  We’re not currently carrying TamStar because in our experience, our Palmetto St. Augustine is as shade tolerant as TamStar and with proper care will look as good or better.

Summary of Michael’s Video About Shade Tolerant St. Augustine Grasses

– – Hey I’m Michael with Houston Grass South, and we’re doing several videos today on several different issues and we were driving around and saw a spot here that a prime example of trying to grow St. Augustine in the shade This is normally, what happened when you are in these neighborhoods that require you to plant a couple of trees out by the curb and you got neighbors with trees and you got a couple in your yard, it’s just really tough in some spots without keeping your trees almost butchered to grow grass. And especially these areas out by the road.

You see the thinning of the grass here and thinning here, these trees are actually trimmed up fairly well and it’s still just kind of a hard sell with regular Raleigh St. Augustine to get this grass to go. Between me and the ladies that work at our office we probably have four or five, maybe six conversations per day about shade issues, people call to say, “hey I can’t get the grass to grow under my trees I’ve got a 30 year old oak trees and I got two or three of ’em”.

Palmetto St. Augustine is More Shade Tolerant than Raleigh St. Augustine Grass

We kind of shake our head, but we do carry, we carry two grasses that are more shade tolerant than the regular Raleigh St. Augustine. Palmetto St. Augustine grass is a grass that we’ve carried for we’ve been around 13 years and we’ve had it, Palmetto’s been around quite a long time, probably even before that.  The rule of thumb is that regular Raleigh St. Augustine requires about seven hours of direct sunlight per day where as the Palmetto can survive on about four.

One problem with Palmetto though is this time of year, when we’re in the heat of summer, we start to get a lot of gray leaf spot, which is a fungus that attacks grass especially in shadier areas and it’s almost inevitable along the Gulf Cost that this gray leaf spot shows up. And for whatever reason Palmetto seems particularly susceptible to it. It may not be near as much fault, the grass’ fault as it is the fact that the grass is planted in shadier areas that never get to really dry out.

Please note that we don’t sell TamStar now because our experience has shown that Palmetto St. Augustine grass performs just as well or better.

TamStar St. Augustine is Shade Tolerant, Looks Great and Resists Gray Leaf Spot

A new grass that has come about through Texas A&M is called TamStar and it’s a St. Augustine that they used some of the DNA from Palmetto to make it, so it’s got some of those it’s got the good shade characteristics and probably similar to that four hours of direct sunlight and then filtered sunlight throughout the day that it probably needs, but it is less susceptible to this gray leaf spot that is such an issue in June, July, August in this part of the world so.  TamStar St. Augustine is also resistant to chinch bugs.

That is a great reason to consider TamStar, it’s a really nice looking grass. It is denser, the blades are a little bit finer than all the other St. Augustines and it’s just really aesthetically a really nice looking grass even if I were going to replace a yard I like it, even if it was going to planted in full sun it’s just has a denser look to it with the finer blades.

If you looked at a stem of grass, here’s, obviously, an unhealthy stem of Raleigh St. Augustine, but if you looked at the stolons there would be a lot more stolons per square inch on a TamStar stem then a regular Raleigh St. Augustine, what you get is a denser looking turf and the finer blade. It just makes it, to me at least, personally, more aesthetically pleasing looking grass, so.

It’s certainly something to consider if you’ve got a shadier area, that being said, we don’t recommend planting any grass in the shade in like July and August, it’s just there’s a lot of problems, lot of things can go wrong, mainly the gray leaf spot and here lately also some sod webworms during those summer months that can be an issue, but TamStar is a fantastic grass and it’s something relatively new, but I think it’s something that’s going to, is a big step in the right direction.

If you have questions, please call our office at 281-431-7441.

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