The easiest thing is to not care about how bad your lawn looks.

In cooler weather you can use a weed and feed, for broad leaf weeds, but now it is too hot. Also have your grass mowed to a height of 3 1/2 inches, most lawn people mow it too short. And it needs at least a 1/2 inch of water a week. Lawns are a lot of maintainence. I use Lesco that I get from their ware house. Now, the only thing you could do is hand weed, that I know of.

I know what you mean. We have it in our Bahia lawn and can't get rid of it for good. It's really too hot for weed killer right now, in the fall try either some Weed B Gone for lawns or Scott's Weed and Feed, which will kill it but if it reseeds it will come back. Read the label, make sure you get the right thing for the type of grass you have. We have deer that come and eat it but they aren't eating enough.

I completely feel your pain. The rabbits seem to love this weed in our bahia lawn - so they reduce it a bit but I think their droppings spread it more. I've tried Bayer weed killer in the spring but it didn't seem to do much. Probably has something to do with the thick long tap root. Hand weeding after it rains makes that chore a little easier - but get all that root.

As far as weed control, I use lots of cracked corn or corn meal if I can find it in bulk. It is a pre-emergent. One poster from the Organic Lawn forum had great success eradicating nutsedge from her lawn by using corn meal and molasses.

Skip over to Organic Lawn Forum - a very knowledgable bunch of people over there. I went organic 5 years ago on my St.Augustine and if I do say so myself, I have the best looking lawn in the 'hood. Soybean meal, cracked corn, molasses and alfalfa pellets - that's it. These grains help feed the soil microbes which is the foundation of a healthy thick lawn. BTW, it is cheaper too than using the chemical stuff.

I don't put chemicals on my St Augustine either, just Milorganite several times a year, and if a spot looks thin I dump some Black Cow on it and it responds.... I've found the same thing works for my rose beds, just use organic, and keep alternating and keep it thick... Black Cow, Black Hen, Milorganite, Alfalfa pellets, Cottonseed meal... and other organics, and lots of compost and leaves, etc....... works for me...........sally

Sharon, I do not irrigate my st augustine nor put weed and feed on it. I do use fertilizer once a year, it is lower in N than the weed and feed stuff normally. My lawn looks as good as most in the neighborhood.

off-thread, did you say you got perlite ordered at the feed store at midway and US1?

bernie

I have Bahai, is that the same as St. Augustine?

Bahia is a different type of grass than St. Augustine. The names can be confusing because the variety of bahia most often used here is Argentine Bahia.

I second Katkin's advice to mow higher, only I would suggest mowing at 4 -5 inches--or even slightly higher if possible. This may seem awfully high, but it's the height recommended for bahia, and I can say from experience that high but frequent mowing keeps bahia much, much healthier. Set the blades higher, and bahia will improve season by season. With time it will outcompete more and more weeds until you have nearly a solid stand.

People say that bahia is weedy, but I've come to think this is only because so many people mow their bahia too low, causing the grass to be constantly stressed. It is very rare to see bahia grass mown at the correct height.

Bill

Bill and Sharon,

I agree with mowing bahia tall, but it takes good tip speed on the mower and a sharp blade otherwise it just beats some of it over and it looks ragged. Also frequent mowing helps this. Also weed and feed is a bad idea, just gives you a false green quick growth because it is too high in N. A long term release with more balanced elements will help you better in the long run.
Do you agree Bill, I have mostly St Augustine experience, but our runway and taxiways are bahia ??

bernie

Seriously, adopt the "If it's green mow it" attitude. It will save you a lot of grief.

About your Pusley weed. We have been overtaken with it as well. It seems like one day I looked at our yard which is actually three separate parts, one part has a pool in it, and all I saw was his weird looking broadleaf stuff. I started pulling it and found that it runs to one main stock which is very deep and very difficult to pull out. My husband tried every type of weed killer known to man and even the one recommended, atrazine, killed just about everything but the Pusley. So I have been hand pulling it! When it's in great big clumps, like 5 feet around, it is really kind of fun. When it's cool enough, that is! It can almost be raked by hand and then exposes a huge amount of moist soil. If you have any Saint Augustine at all, it will run into the open spot. We had so much Pusley, however, that it has taken forever, with lots of water, to get the Saint Augustine to run. I have had a terrible time. I've spent hours pulling the weeds. I spent 4 hours, last night, forgetting to eat dinner pulling strictly Presley. But where it's been pulled, I try to keep up with it and keep the little Newcomers out and the yard has filled in in those spots. So now the front yard and the side yards are free of Pusley for the most part. The backyard I just started on a couple days ago and it's going to be another month probably before I get it all done. I don't know of any other way of getting rid of it and pulling it and it's kind of a mindlesss job. I hate Florida, sorry all you Floridians. My daughter says I need to be renamed, obsessed with weeds!

@LuAnne If you obsess over your lawn, you will go crazy. Perfect lawns in FL are damned near impossible. I've seen a couple, but only achieved with hours of work and tons of money and chemicals. If you want to love Florida, just plant some ground cover and forget having a perfect lawn. I don't understand why you would hate a whole state because of a few weeds. Just mow the weeds, call it a lawn, and learn to love the rest of the wonderful things about gardening here.

<deja vu start>

The bulk, and here I'm talking more than 90%, of your landscape maintenance money will drown in your lawn. Nothing is more expensive to grow than lawn grass in Florida. Water, fertilizer, chemicals, mowing and blowing are the absolute essentials for a nice lawn and they don't come cheap.

Yes, you can do it if you want to and if you have the extra coin, but in the long run, you'd be better off ripping it up and replacing it with trees and shrubs, rocks and mulch.

<deja vu stop>

What fawnridge said. Unless your HOA mandates a lawn, you can have other landscaping that is more attractive and wastes less water and puts fewer noxious chemicals into the water supply.

If your HOA does mandate a grass lawn, start agitating to change the rules.

I gave up and as long as it's green I'm ok with it.

I find that watering per water restrictions and allowing the grass to get 4-5" before cutting has kept my lawn as free of weeds as possible. No mean feat as my neighbors have mostly weed ground cover.

Luanne, how about an in-between? Keep your weed-free front lawn, but convert your back into real landscape with trees, shrubs and perennials? You'll have so much fun doing it, and will love it. Then next year do a side yard, and the next do the other side yard, then see what you want to do. If you can do only a quarter or a half of your back yard this year, try that. However, in my opinion, it is also costly to do this. The expense of buying the plants and water, etc. to get them established. For less expense, go native or Florida Friendly. Lots of great choices there. Pools look great with surrounding vegetation. Maybe that's a good place to start- just make sure it's not stuff that will shed a lot and make your pool maintenance more difficult. Have fun with it and experiment!

I really don't mean to be harsh. I had a perfect centipede grass lawn in SC with little to no effort, because centipede will choke out any weeds that try to come up in it, and it doesn't even like fertilizer. Zoysia for shade areas, which also chokes out every weed that tries to get a foothold. When I first moved to FL, we had a 3-year drought and my beautiful St. Augustine lawn nearly died, since I had no sprinkler system and water was outrageously expensive where I lived. The only place it lived was the Bitter Blue under the oaks, and you could literally watch it die in the areas where it grew out from under the oaks into the sun. I tried to reseed with Bahia, but hated it because of all the seed heads. Bermuda moved in and was strangling out every bit of lawn grass. Little by little, I gave up on the perfect lawn and planted some Sunshine Mimosa, which was just starting to take over well when I left. I hope the new tenants appreciate it, but they will probably try to kill it.

Florida + perfect lawn = millionaire, or at least that's what I think when I see a perfect lawn down here.

Have you tried Weed-b-Gon Chickweed, Clover, and Oxalis Killer? That's the full name and not just the sub text. If you have and that did not work, then try this: find the end of a stem of the weed and put it into a bud vase half filled with Round Up. Leave it for a week or two. The RU will be absorbed and kill the main root. I was able to kill an entire garden infestation of bindweed with one application. It was a beautiful sight to behold!!

One thing that shocked me was learning that Atrazine-a potent herbicide used in the corn belt-was registered for use on Florida lawns. That is just about the height of foolishness-the use of a seriously damaging material for a non-serious purpose-killing lawn weeds. Atrazine has the ability to leach down into the water table. Most of the wells in Wisconsin-for one example-are contaminated with this highly toxic herbicide. Take your sandy, limestone soils down there and pour Atrazine on top of it.....and it is a direct invitation for all manner of water issues. The very heights of foolishness.

Ah, but Tom, Florida doesn't need clean water. The state just passed regulations increasing the amounts of many toxic chemicals, like benzene, that are allowed in the water supply here now.

Well OK then! Nothing to see here. Mhmmm....benzene!

Yeah, it's just what we need, and it's obvious why--so we too can start having earthquakes from fracking, which the gov and legislature think is a simply swell idea.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/indian-river-lagoon/health/florida-regulators-sign-off-on-controversial-water-standards-3827be1c-62cd-0e3b-e053-0100007f845d-388331421.html

Not to get political, but we need to vote these fools out office to save our state. All they care about is money and campaign contributions.

Completely agree, DG.

Just wanted to add that you can overseed a Bahai lawn in late fall and it will come up in the spring. Be sure to cover the seed, though, or you'll just be feeding the birds.

Last summer my sprinklers were out because a deeply buried zone was smashed by a root grinder. The lawn was in hortible condition

This spring after repairing the sprinklers I bought 4 trays of plugs watered every day for 2 weeks and now the 2x per week keeps it looking good.

If it were up to me I would plant perennial flowering weeds as a bee habitat.

Idiotic cities and water sucking lawn requirements.

My neighbor , a retired banker from PA decided to apply Atrazine or Round Up ??? on MY Bahia lawn in an attempt to keep the Pusley from invading his yard. He killed all my grass along the property line 2ft by about 50 ft, its OBVIOUS what he did yet he denies doing anything. I wish he'd take up golf or something, instead of making a hobby out of destroying other peoples property like a spoiled brat Russian.