Shade Damage To Your Lawn
What is shade damage?
An area (or areas) or your lawn is not receiving adequate sunlight. As a result, your turfgrass is thinning. *Note: Even the most shade-tolerant grasses will become thin over two to five years.
Turfgrass Light Requirements
- Full Sunshine: Bermudagrass
- Full sunshine to very light shade: Hybrid Bermudagrass (Includes Tifway419, Tifway II, TifSport, Patriot)
- Full sunshine to light shade: TifGrand Bermudagrass
- Full sunshine to partial shade: Emerald, Zeon Zoysiagrass (Of the Zoysiagrasses, Zeon is the most shade tolerant)
- Full sunshine to light shade: Meyer, Empire, other broadleaf Zoysiagrass
- Light shade to partial shade: Tall Fescue
Definition of Sunlight Levels
- Full sunshine: Eight hours/day (or more) of unfiltered sunshine
- Very light shade: Seven hours/day of sunshine filtered through high pine foliage or very scattered hardwood trees or seven hours/day of unfiltered sunshine
- Light shade: Six hours/day of sunshine filtered through high pine foliage or scattered hardwood trees or six hours/day of unfiltered sunshine
- Partial shade: Eight hours/day of sunshine filtered through high pine foliage OR five hours/day of direct sunshine
- Shade: All-day sunshine filtered through scattered hardwood trees OR direct sunshine only four hours/day
- Dense shade: No direct sunshine touches the lawn all day. Examples: shade between two houses whose shadows prevent sunshine from hitting the lawn all day or turf under a heavy canopy of mature hardwoods.
What are the Options for Shady Areas of My Lawn?
- No turfgrass will grow well in shade or dense shade. For shady areas along existing plant bed(s) consider expanding your plant bed lines with mulch and/or planting shade tolerant plants.
- For shady areas under tree canopies, consider creating a mulch bed. Mulching under a tree canopy will not only improve the appearance of your landscape, it will benefit the tree’s overall health by removing turf which competes with the tree for nutrients.
- For shady areas caused by low-hanging tree limbs, consider pruning the tree limbs to increase the amount of sunlight available to the turfgrass.
- For shady areas caused by your home or other permanent structures, consider installing shade-tolerant plants and/or a stone walking path.
- Use Suncalc to see how much sunlight you get
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