My front yard St Augustine grass has become mostly yellow starting with the spring growth and continuing somewhat thru the season. A couple lawn care companies have looked at it, no answer. I use high quality fertilizer blended for this area regulary and water appropriately. Any solutions/suggestions would be greatly apreciated. al palmer

Allen:

It sounds like you have either St. Augustine Decline (SAD) virus or iron chlorosis. Iron chlorosis can be corrected with a foliar application of iron sulfate or iron chelate. If this was the problem, I would have thought that the lawn care companies would have suggested this treatment. Since the lawn care companies did not, I suspect that your lawn has St. Augustine Decline (SAD) virus. This causes the lawn to become chlorotic (yellow) and applications of fertilizer will not turn an affected lawn green. Over time (3+ yrs.) the St. Augustine grass will die out. The good news is that there are resistant varieties of St. Augustine that you can overseed over your lawn to take the place of the diseased plants. Here are a couple of web sites for you to take a look at: (1) St. Augustine Decline, TAMU Ext., http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/turf/publications/Staugdecline.html and (2) St. Augustine Decline Virus, Landscape America, http://www.landscape-america.com/problems/diseases/sad.html

I hope this helps,