PLEASE HELP w/ choice of turf!

mangman – posted 10 October 2001 09:03

I am in desperate need of help with choosing a type of turf. Recently purchased a home in Tampa, Florida. Cleared out all old landsape down to bear soil. Tilled, trimmed trees and raked last weekend to prepare for sod. Front yard gets full sun with some shade later in the day, yet predominantly is sun. Back yard was shade however I trimmed some trees which now allows portals of sun in. I did some research and figured my best option for grass types would be bitter blue or palmetto based on conditions. I want to steer well away from bahia since it is ugly and weed based. Is palmetto and bitter blue my options? My concern is the shade aspect in the back yard. I know rye grass will grow yet it will die come summer time do to drought conditions we sometimes have in Tampa. Someone please help with advice! thx

seed – posted 10 October 2001 09:51

mangman, Seville St. Augustinegrass is another very good choice for shade, and it is comparable in shade tolerance to Palmetto St. Augustinegrass.

Bitterblue St. Augustinegrasss is only intermediate in shade tolerance between the Palmetto and Seville varieties of St. Augustinegrass (somewhat tolerant) and Floratam St. Augustinegrass (basically intolerant). That’s based both on artificial and natural shade tolerance studies.

The other difficulty with Bitterblue is that there are few sod production farms that actually produce Bitterblue. It’s close enough in appearance to Floratam that Bitterblue is sometimes misrepresented or confused with Floratam, which because of its atrazine herbicide tolerance is easier to grow for the sod producer than the Bitterblue variety of St. Augustinegrass.

Here is some data and a photograph of a 1990 study comparing St. Augustinegrass varieties under 83% shade of sabal palm and oak trees:http://floridaturf.com/staugust/shade.htm

There can be considerable uncertainty in what people mean by “shade,” and that web page also explains how shadiness might be measured on site with a single-lens reflex camera or a light meter.

In the sun, Palmetto and Seville will grow fine, although in my personal experience they are not as tolerant of prolonged drought as Floratam, and although the southern chinch bug attacks all these varieties (though not the FX-10), Floratam is more forgiving of neglect and abuse than any other variety of St. Augustinegrass, with the exception of shade which it does not tolerate (depending on how “shady” we mean).

Phil

lawn guy – posted 12 October 2001 07:15

Seashore paspalum could be an option for your application. I know of several yards in the Tampa are that are much like yours. Some varieties of Seashore paspalum do better than others. However, typically you will have to have about 2 hours of sun per day for paspalums.

Try SeaWay or SeaGreen Seashore paspalum. SeaIsle1 is not shade tolerant and gets diseases.

Good luck.