hi I'm Mike Henry with the University of California Cooperative Extension I'm standing on st. Augustine grass one of the warm season grasses that's used throughout the southern United States including Southern California as you can see it's a fairly it's a fairly coarse turf grass it does have runners I'm going to pull up an example of a dormant runner here and it is very shade tolerant so it's one of the more more shade tolerant turf grasses and certainly probably along with zuzia the most shade tolerant warm season turf grass it does get an insect problem that needs to be addressed occasionally called the chinch bug but other than that it's a it's a very suitable grass for residential uses it doesn't have high wear tolerance so it's not used for sports purposes but for a residential lawn it's it's fine it requires a fair amount of nitrogen four to six pounds of actual nitrogen per thousand square feet per year and as you can see it does build up quite a thick thick spongy fatch layer if you use a real type lawnmower that's fairly heavy you can mow it a little bit shorter and keep that sponginess down but it's it's one of the characteristics of this grass it does produce a thick mat