what kind of grass is this?

i picked up a customer in mid summer. i'm not familiar with warm season grass types. his lawn was brown, and it looked like zoysia grass does in the winter. it was thick and corse like zoysia, and there were no weeds in it. the summer came and went, and this grass never turned green at all. what is it? and how do u make it green?

 

It's called dead grass! Actually, I don't know. Could be dead zoysia? I never see anything but blue, fescue, rye, and zoysia around here. Maybe a bermuda or a centipede?

 

i don't know. it wasn't dead, that's for sure. very odd. maybe i'll take a picture

 

Bermuda is quite common around here and it only greens up a little when it gets HOT and lots of sun. It is very invasive getting into flower beds and spreads by both stallons & rhysomes. Your climate is cooler than mine so this mite be it and your climate wont support its needs. We always kill it off and redo yards with fescue/blue grass mix or sod. Dont even both trying to green it up

 

Look for the discarded editions of Popular Science. Once you find that you will know its zoysia...They sold/sell it as the end all/beat all grass of the future. It grows well in the hot summer months but come the first 45 degree day it turns brown.

Offer to turf paint it.

 

If it never turned green, did it grow? Did someone put down too much weed and feed at some point and burn it out (present company excluded of course)? It was plenty hot in the NE for any warm season grass to turn green unless the people never watered? I don't get it...

 

It could be St. Augustine. I have a number of clients who have it in their yards by chance.

 

Definately sounds like zoysia for sure.

It stays a dense mat even when dormant.

I'd guess it never greened up because the soil temps never got warm enough...
And then you had the drought right?

 

Will that even grow way up there?

 

i have other zoysia lawns, in the same neighborhood, that were green. could someone have fertilized it improperly, to cause this? and no, it never grew. i did in fact, drop the client because, since july it need cutting only twice. and that was a minor clipping at best. it's not dead grass. like i said, it looks exactly like zoysia looks in the winter. but, it looked like that all year. i asked the client about the history of the lawn, he couldn't tell me anything, they just moved in, in june.