Zoysia Lawns – Slow Green-up in 2014

I’ve been puzzled by the differences in health between different zoysia lawns.

My neighbor 2 doors down has a green and verdant zoysia lawn. My neighbor around the corner has slow and spotty green-up.

The NC State Center for Turfgrass Research said this on June 4, 2014:

“Green-up of our warm-season grasses was late in 2014. Last month we thought winter injury might not be too bad. Unfortunately that has not been the case.

The hardest hit grasses have been the fine-textured zoysiagrasses (e.g. Emerald, Zeon, Zorro, Pristine, etc.) and Centipedegrass (both Common and TifBlair).

Damage in the coarse-textured zoysiagrasses (e.g. Empire, El Toro, Zenith, Compadre, etc) and bermudagrass has been more sporadic; whereas Meyer zoysiagrass generally was not injured to any great extent.”

Side by side green up of two fine-textured zoysiagrasses taken on June 3, 2014 in Raleigh, NC. Note that both should be fully green and actively growing. The cultivar on the left had heavy winter injury and cultivar on right had moderate injury.