re sodding St. Augustine

brungal – posted 26 June 2005 13:59

I am hoping someona can give me some good advice. My lawn right now is completely garbage. I have weeds of every type and a bunch of different grasses. The original St. Augustine is mostly dead, except in spots. I am planning on starting over.The place I plan to get my sod from told me to kill everything with roundup and wait about 14 days. Then sod directly over the dead grass. They said the dead grass would act as fertilizer for the new sod. Would this be logical ?

Thanks For your Time : )

Tungsten33333 – posted 26 June 2005 19:19

1) scalp them

2) sod – get Palmetto St Augustine variety; keep them MOIST. You will have to water several times a day for a couple weeks till the roots establish. Then cut down to 3x per week for 30 minutes for one week or so. Then 2x per week for 45 minutes (early mornings)(3-4 days apart). Then from now on once a week for an hour in early morning. By next year, water as needed. In the dry hot summer, one inch a week will be enough.

3) 1 cubic yard finished compost per 1000 sqft immediately after sodding. Should be a thin layer of compost.

4) 20lbs of corn meal per 1000sqft immediately after compost. Water them in well.

5) DO NOT USE CHEMICALS! Gp to www.dirtdoctor.com for more information on organic ways of maintaining your lawn…

Alex_in_FL – posted 27 June 2005 19:25

Most every type weed? My recommendation is very different from previous poster but I have more questions to provide a good answer.

1. Where do you live?2. Do you have sedge (nutgrass) or just mixture of weeds?3. Is the soil fairly good or poor?4. How long has the sod supplier been in business?

Answer these and I will offer my recommendations.

FYI – scalping leaves the weeds. Roundup does not kill sedge. The type of SA depends upon the location and amount of sun you receive.

Alex

QWERTY – posted 27 June 2005 19:34

Alex,

Palmetto grows anywhere, better than other SA varieties. Very cold hardy. Stays green longer than other. It goes on. There’s one on the way that’s even better… it was breed from Sir Walter cultivar. This one is very impressive SA. I can’t wait to get my hands on this new SA which I’m not naming. I want to be one of the first ones to get them…

Alex_in_FL – posted 28 June 2005 19:01

Hi QWERTY

If Palmetto grows better everywhere then why are all the yards here in Merritt Island Florida Floratam? I know that Floratam is more chinch bug resistant.

QWERTY – posted 28 June 2005 21:23

Alex-

Floratam is an old variety that was developed back in the 70s by U of Florida and Texas A&M. Palmetto wasn’t widely available till recently. Guess who had a huge head start? I read that there’s a new strain of chinch bug affecting Floratam. Floratam is not that great when it comes to staying alive in cold weather. Palmetto is much more cold hardy. Palmetto has better shade tolerant. Things are going to change in Florida, apparently. It seems that more and more new subdivisions are planting Zoysia specifically Empire variety rather than SA. We’ll see how that turns out in 10 years. The new SA variety on the way … SAPPHIRE which was bred from Sir Walter Buffalograss (they call that instead of SA in Australia for some reason). Google that. You’ll see that it’s very good one. Floratam appears to be on its way out.

RickV – posted 01 July 2005 11:08

I recently laid Bitter Blue SA. I live in the Gainesville FL area. When I asked the local sod farms about Palmetto SA they said they quit growing it because of it is not very fungus tolerant. We have very high humidity here and it seems the Palmetto gets the fungus because of this. BTW the Bitter Blue if doing fantastic.