There is also a tendency for SA to get purple colors on the formerly green blades. I'm not sure what causes that but it happens a lot and doesn't seem to have any lasting effects. Once it greens up the purple goes away. My grass in George West has some purple in it. The only difference from my lawn in San Antonio it seems is the amount of moisture it has gotten in the past few weeks. In GW all we've had is fog for precip. In SA it has rained a few times in the past few weeks. Then again, the SA grass is not dormant yet and the GW grass is dormant where it is short (less than 5 inches high). The taller grass is not dormant.

How often should I water during the dormant stage? Normally I water according to the 'look' of the grass, but when it is domrnant I can't really tell if it's thirsty. The local radio stations say to water every other week during winter...is this good advice?



p.s. I think my zoysia finally went dormant. It's light green and stray colored in places. My SA is also dormant I believe.

Ron Burgundy wrote:How often should I water during the dormant stage? Normally I water according to the 'look' of the grass, but when it is domrnant I can't really tell if it's thirsty. The local radio stations say to water every other week during winter...is this good advice?

Generically it is good advice, but not great advice. Do what the pros do, take something like a long screw driver or plastic pointed dowel rod and stick into the ground about 6 inches, and either look down the hole or stick you finger in and see if it is dry or not. No sense wasting water. If it is dried out down to 4 inches, give it a drink.

Be sure to probe around in different areas of the yard to get the BIG PICTURE.

There are two reasons I can think of for watering in the winter. One is to gain thermal mass in the soil as protection from a freeze. The other is to keep your beneficial soil microbes going. You won't have all the same ones you have when the soil is warmer, but there are definitely active colonies of microbes doing what they do in the winter.