st. Augustine in the shade

bozey45 – posted 08 August 2006 15:59

what can we use in Central Florida to fill in gaps where the St. Augustine won’t grow?? we track in soil in the house and need something to fill in the gaps; surely there must be something to use here in Florida

hankhill – posted 10 August 2006 15:31

St. Augustine does grow in the shade.Or, at least it does a lot better thanmany other plants there. If it’s completeshade that never sees sun during the wholeday, I’m not sure what will grow. Amerishadevariant of St. Augustine requires less sunthan Delmar, but I’m not sure whether it’sSAD or chinchbug resistant like the morepopular variants.

RickV – posted 19 August 2006 19:02

My yard is surrounded by oak trees. There is an area that gets maybe 2 to 3 hours of sunlight a day. I placed a test pallet of Bitter Blue St Augustine June of last year in the shaded area and it did great and still is doing great. I then placed the Bitter Blue in the rest of my yard and have had good results. I live NW of Gainesville Florida

DoctorOfTheLawns – posted 05 October 2006 16:51

St Augustine does love the shade but it can have too much of it. If it seems like it is thin in the most heavily shaded areas…I would try to thin out the trees if possible.

bozey45 – posted 05 October 2006 18:08

yes, thanks; think I’ll cut off some lower limbs and let more sun in that way also; they’ve also come out with these grow-in-any-type-of-shade grasses now and I might try that also; WalMart sells several brands of those-they are seed grasses that are formulated for different areas. One is advertised on TV only called Turf-patch or something like that.

hankhill – posted 06 October 2006 17:15

There’s Amerishade, of course, but I’m notsure what kind of disease resistance orcold tolerance it has. All my shady areasseem to do very, very well compared with therest of the yard. They grow faster, neverget any grassy weeds (broadleaf weeds only),and stay green longest into the winter.

I guess you must have significantly more…

chap914 – posted 20 December 2006 21:50

I live in SW Florida near Naples. I had problems with St Augustine doing poorly in the 15′ strip on both sides of my villa and my neighbors to the north and south due to lack of sun. I resodded these areas with a type of St Augustine known as Floritan (sic) which has done extremely well after it became established. Just keep it cut at least 3″ to keep out weeds and crabgrass.