Need Yard Help/Suggestions for Overhaul in Bradenton, Florida

BigKeyserSoze – posted 18 July 2004 10:51

I live in Bradenton, Florida, which is on Florida’s West Coast, about an hour South of Tampa (basically, mid-west Florida). It is hot in the summer and not cold in the winter. Summer temperature is generally around 90 degrees (for three months), cold in winter might be a low of 40-50 degrees for a week or two, with perhaps a day or two at 35 degrees. I bought the house I am in 8 months ago, and the yard looks horrible. A few potentially pertinent facts:

1. We live on a canal on the Manatee River, which is generally considered either saltwater or brackish. Our house was built in 1996, which is when the yard was originally sodded. While we have no direct proof of this, if the builder needed fill for the lots, it may well be that they used canal dredge for this purpose.

2. The Gulf of Mexico is about 5 miles down the river from us. We do not have a seawall behind the house, but the yard is about 4 feet above the waterline, separated by rip-rap. Starting at about the midpoint of the house to the rear, there is a gradual slope to the rip rap, of which the slope gets increasingly larger at about the ¾ line of the house, all the way to the rip rap. Some of the increasing slope is from the erosion referenced in #3, above.

3. The “grass”, and we will use that term loosely, in the front and the rear appears to be a mix of sand, weeds and woodchips, and there is no real grass to speak of. Someone told me that the yard was originally sodded with Bahia grass, which dies every 5-6 years. Not sure if that is true or not, but I am sure that the yard needs a total overhaul. Many houses in our neighborhood have recently re-sodded (probably 10 re-sod jobs in the last two months).

4. The rear lawn has an erosion problem which carried away some of the soil. Before we do any yard overhaul, we are currently installing roof gutters that will take roof runoff underground and deposit it in the canal. We will then bring in some fill to re-level the yard, and will then be ready to do something with the lawn.

5. The house has no underground sprinklers. When #3, above is complete, we will be installing sprinklers.

6. We have a very small lot, waterfront being too expensive for a large lot, and have no kids, so we do not need to be able to play in the yard, or otherwise have much foot traffic around the yard. We want a yard that is green and looks good, and does not need too much maintenance.

7. We have a small/medium oak tree in the front yard, which shades a part of the front yard. We also have a palm tree in the front, which provides almost no shade. The rear yard is pretty small, and has no real shade.

8. The front yard, we have many bare spots, which appear to have very small what look like dead root systems on the surface. They and the soil underneath them are pretty compact.

Which brings us to the main question: What kind of grass, based on the above, should we consider given our needs as indicated herein? Should we seed or sod for it? It is clear that we are going to need to spray something to kill what we have down, then have all of the old dead stuff ripped out. We are not yard experts, but will do what needs to be done to get the yard looking good. What I want to avoid is being oversold something by local sodders and/or seeders, and do not want to do this job twice.

My other question is, what kind of grade should we have on the yard, particularly the rear? I assume that there is supposed to be a gradual slope to the yard so water does not pond up in heavy rainstorms.

Additionally, we hire a yard crew, which uses heavy riding lawnmowers, which I have always though is overkill for our small yard. Does this compact the soil and lead to poor results?

I have to ask general questions, but what thoughts/options are available to us? If I have not provided enough feedback, I would be happy to provide as much additional information as you need to try to get my hands around this problem. I suspect many others have a similar situation to mine, so perhaps we can solve many problems with one post. Thank you in advance for any thoughts, and I will be happy to share my results with the group when complete.

BigKeyserSoze – posted 07 August 2004 14:40

With all of the facts above does noone have an opinion on this?

BeHateIt – posted 08 August 2004 16:44

Here are my thoughts.

First of all it sounds like you got some money to spend on the project and if so, a premium turfgrass would be my choice if I had a lot of money. (Or any money).

As for what is available in florida, 99% of all the lawns in this state are st. aug or bahia. The rest are zoysia, bermuda and so on. I think it mainly depends on what look you are going for and what maintenance level. Personally, I don’t know why anyone likes st. augustine or bahia. I think the first of the two is not idea for what I need and higher maintenance and expensive. Bahia grows about 8″-10″ in a week when in the rainy season (now). Bahia is cheap thus the builders put it in but it’s not fun if you have to mow it or pay someone to mow it and it looks like $h!t if you ask me.

For your point #1 You would be lucky if they did use the fill from dredging the canal. Around here, they use sand and it’s horrible.

For your point #2, You will have lots of natural grasses and weeds coming in. I wouldn’t spend too much in the back.

For #4, it would make more sense to get a large sistern and direct your water into it, then when the sprinkler system goes in, you will be using free recycled rain water rather than expensive city water or rust colored well water.

For #6, you pretty much can do with any of the options that are available.

For #7, if it’s a live oak or similar with narrow leaves, it’s not going to provide enough shade to hinder the grown of the grass. Maybe in 150 years, but not for a while. But you can pretty much forget about fescue!

As for the grade, you should slope it away from the house. This is florida and heavy downpours will mean brief ponding in the yard. Learn to like it.

Heavy riding mowers are fine as long as the grass should be mowed with that type of mower and at the recommended height.

As far as your needs, from what you’ve said, it really doesn’t sound like you have any. You can put down bahia. I hate it, so I wouldn’t recommend it. You can put down St. Augustine. Which has a nice appearance with proper maintenance and is expensive to put in, if that’s what you like get that, you’ll never get an award for originality with it. You can put in Zoysia. I like the appearance of it but not too familiar with the maintenance requirements which I believe are greater than the others.

I think you should put in what I am redoing my yard with and that’s Bermuda. The wondergrass. Some people hate it, but I prefer it. It’s low maintenance, nice color, drought resistant, easy to mow, fine texture and can be planted in seed (cheap but you have to wait) or sod (still pretty cheap for bermuda but your availability is going to be limited but in 3 or 4 months your lawn is full and beeyootiful.You’ll also have a more original lawn which thrives in the hot sun or in moderate shade.

sodoff – posted 08 August 2004 22:34

BeHateIt,

What type of bermuda have you decided on? i.e. “Bulls-eye, Celebration, Tiffsport, Tiff-419, etc)

BaHateIt – posted 09 August 2004 12:45

I’m using plain ol’ numex Sahara right from the walmart garden center. But if it weren’t for the fact that the whole thing started as an experiment and if I was redoing it all from scratch without any threat of contamination, I’d go with sod that required more tlc.