Watering twice a day should be fine there if you are only moistening the surface of the soil. That might be about 5 minutes of watering. You should never drench the soil. If the soil is still fairly moist from the morning, I would start to skip the evening water every now and then.

Otherwise caring for St Augustine is pretty simple. Set your mower for the highest setting and weld it in place. There is never a good reason to mow it any lower than the highest spot. With your summers, you can deep water it about once every 2 weeks. Fertilize 3x per year on Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. If you are going to use corn meal or other grain type organics, you can apply any day and as often as you can afford. I might ask, where did you find corn meal? I have a friend in Huntington Beach who's looking for it.

Once the sod is knit down to the soil, you can back way off on the frequency and go up on the duration. Here is the basic info on watering.

Watering: Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, sprinkler and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the daytime air temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so it should work for you. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall.

Thank you joe and dchall for the advice. It's going to be in the high 90s the next 3-4 days here. Would cutting back to watering once a day be a good idea for new sods? Would that promote root growth?

dchall,

i got the corn meal from a feed store call Generation West in the city of El Monte ( literally down the street from where I work.

Dude! My first in-laws lived about 2 miles away from that feed store.

Don't cut back until the roots are stuck to the soil. If you can still lift a corner of the sod up from the ground, then it's not ready to cut back yet.

Dchall,

On average, how long does it takes for the roots to really grounded into the soil? It's going to be a week tomorrow when the sods was put in. Thanks.

My new sod took about 30 days to get good roots about half an inch long. St Aug grows a little slower than that so I'd guess 45 days is your target

Mine took 3 weeks. It was laid in November near the Georgia-Florida line.

As they said, it varies.

I've cut back to just watering once a day now. I've noticed some weeds here and there as well as mushrooms. Been picking it out every morning for the last 2 days.

there are parts of the lawn that looks really good (St aug on steroid if you will) and there are parts where it looks like it's going to take some time.

Mushrooms are a sign of too much water, so you can defs back off.

Can you take a picture of the weeds? St Aug is sensitive to normal the Weed-b-Gon type of fertilizers. Some weeds will be overtaken by the St Aug and don't need to be treated, but others require an atrazine product. Need a picture.

Once you get it all rooted in and watering properly, it will all look like its on steroids. Garden Grove is an ideal place to have St Aug.

First 2 pictures (weed)

3rd picture (really healthy looking)

4th picture (not enough water?)

First 2 pictures: poa annua. A weed that you need to get rid of asap. Herbicides with atrazine are the only ones safe for St Aug. They will be effective against the poa annua. Typically atrazine products take 3 weeks before the weeds are gone. About the only thing that can live through atrazine is St Augustine. Read the label 2 or 3 times to really understand how to apply. You have to walk backwards when applying so you don't walk through it. Keep the pets and kids out for a day. And remember it is only a foliage mist, not a soil drench. Atrazine products usually come in a bottle with purple markings like this one.

3rd picture is pretty healthy looking grass. It's like St Augustine porn.

4th picture: fungal disease caused by either too much water or by suffocation. Get the corn meal on that spot right away and back way off on the watering. I would go directly to the watering schedule I posted a few days ago.

It looks like I'll need to cut back on the watering, but since the sods are pretty new..do you still suggest sticking with the watering schedule you posted? And for the poa annua, it's only here and there that I don't mind just pulling it. Is it something that I must use the atrazine for? Meaning even if I keep pulling it, it will keep coming back unless I use the atrazine. And for the corn meal, is there such thing as over doing it? I'm thinking of just spread by hand. thanks again for the help. I'm pretty much a beginner with this stuff.

I have a 50lb alfalfa pellets and corn meal. either one is fine?

I think the corn meal is the one he was wanting you to use on the fungus

You cannot control poa annua by hand. Since you don't have much you can try to do it by hand this year since, but next year when you see how much more you have you'll be spraying. April is the month to spray it out. Atrazine should only be used once a year, so don't get jumpy with it. Wait until the weeds are up and running.

There's no real limit to corn meal. All you need for the fungus is 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You can apply 40 pounds if you want to.

St Augustine is pretty forgiving with water. If the blades are folded together in the early morning, then water it deeply. If they are folded together in the afternoon, that's an indication that you'll need water in a day or two.

I opened up the cornmeal to start spreading it today and noticed that there are little bugs inside. I still went ahead and just spread it anyways..I hope that it's not a stupid mistake?

There are always bugs in the grains from the feed store. Bugs are one of the differences between "feed grade" and "food grade" grains. Go ahead and use up all of your bags before winter comes. Otherwise the bugs will work inside the bag all winter leaving you with a gooey mess in the spring. I mix it all up and spread it anyway, but it does have an increased ick factor.

I certainly will! Thanks! Will keep posted as to how the lawn is doing.