Need Help with Problem Patch of Lawn

[NJDan]

Hi all. KBG lawn in New Jersey. I've had the sodded and irrigated lawn about 10 years now and have found that the area under a massive hickory tree just doesn't grow well. I've had fungal outbreaks, had to replace small sections with new sod and pretty much every year have to take plugs and patch dead spots. My soil chemistry has always been good (got Logan labs analysis for a couple of years). This year we had a tremendous amount of rain so I was interested to see if this area would fare better. I'm assuming the area is water starved because of the tree roots. I basically could hardly have irrigated with more water than mother nature provided. Still no good.

I'm trying to figure out what to do. Try a different kind of grass? Plant shrubs/other instead of grass? Cutting down the tree is not an option. It seems that anything I put there other than a lawn will look odd. Thanks for any comments!

The tree is to the left on the border with the neighbor:



Here is a close up of the problem area:



Healthy lawn not under the tree canopy:

[turf_toes]

Yep. Grass under trees can be tough. You have a couple of choices.

Water more in that area. But frankly between fungal concerns and how much water a mature tree can take up, that doesn’t seem like a good approach.

Try seeding with fine or tall fescue in that area. That might help. But it might not.

Your surest bet is to create a mulch planting bed. But again, those plants will be competing for resources with the tree. So pick your plants wisely.

If yo go the Fescue route, check the NTEP results closest to your area. The soils and climate in NJ can vary widely depending on which part of the state you live.

[NJDan]

Maybe I'll throw some TTTF down and see what happens since it's that time of year anyway.

Thanks for the thoughts!

[zhotster]

Would Bewitched KBG possibly work under a tree? I used it in a shaded area of my KBG lawn and it worked wonderfully. My 2 cents worth and I wish you good luck!

[turf_toes]

Would Bewitched KBG possibly work under a tree? I used it in a shaded area of my KBG lawn and it worked wonderfully. My 2 cents worth and I wish you good luck!

Bewitched works well. But finding sod quality (gold tag) seed has been an issue for several years. All the vendors who seem to have it are blue tag or not sod quality.

[NJDan]

If Bewitched works I'm not too concerned if it is sod quality or not

[NJDan]

So I ended up getting bewitched and put it down last Saturday. Just starting to see a few blades coming up after 8 days. I'm a couple of weeks late getting started but it's probably for the best since we had record heat and then huge rains anyway. I'm really interested to see if it works. I called the seed company and they said bewitched should work on the shady north side of the house as well.