How to Care for Zoysia Manila

Provide the zoysia Manila grass with 1 inch of water per week during the hottest part of the summer, spread out in two to three applications per week.

Put on a dust mask and gloves. Close the hopper vent on the broadcast spreader and fill the hopper with 1 pound of nitrogen fertilizer for each 1,000 square feet of lawn.

Set the spreader on one of the two shortest ends of the lawn. Open the hopper and quickly walk along the lawn, fertilizing it as you go. Do the same on the other short end of the lawn. These are header strips, and you will use these to turn the spreader off when you make a turn.

Walk back and forth across the remainder of the lawn, overlapping the strips and turning the spreader off when you reach a header strip and need to turn around.

Give the lawn 1 inch of water after applying the fertilizer. Put unused fertilizer back in the fertilizer bag. Set the spreader on the driveway or sidewalk and clean it out with the hose.

Repeat the fertilizing process on zoysia Manila lawns in late spring, early summer and early fall.

Set the lawn mower on its lowest setting and mow during spring green up. This is known as scalping, and it aids in removing thatch.

Prevent rust, a common fungal disease caused by Puccinia coronate or Puccinia graminis, by routinely fertilizing and watering the zoysia lawn. If you notice patches of an orange, powdery substance, put down an additional application of nitrogen. Plant pathologists with the University of Kentucky suggest that this additional fertilizer application eliminates the need for fungicides.

Pull back the sod and look for small white grubs – the larva of several types of beetles in the Scarabaeidae family -- if you notice small patches of brown zoysia. Count the number of grubs per square feet and treat the lawn if the level reaches four to five per square foot. Apply an insecticide powder containing Paenibacillus popilliae, a bacterium, by scattering, in a checkerboard pattern, 1 teaspoon every 4 feet.