Thank you for your reply. I do see lawns here and other areas like at the end of the road that are not sod and not watered and yet are green. They look like mix of grasses. I was told by a neighbor that they were once pastureland but no one knows what kind of grasses were planted there pre-1982 when this small private subdivision was put in. Part of this sub' was pasture and part was wooded. I'm living on the end that was wooded, heavily treed with lots of brush. I may just leave it the way it is but those with grass look so much better.

I do pretty much what Pea does as far as the 'lawn' Its @ 4acres here so it just is what it is. It gets mowed. I don't weed much except around the flowerbeds or pot ghettos etc lol. The butterflies here LOVE the weed flowers. Who am I to deny them lol plus Im too lazy. If I had more energy and time I'd just plant wildflowers on the whole place and turn it into a wildlife habitat and never mow.

Argentine (some times Pensacola bahai) bahai is what most people use in pastures and large areas. It is the only seed grass that really works in zone 9. It does need full sun and it is very hard to get it going. Needs plenty of water to start. You might want to do one section at a time. Even if you get a little of it started it will spread over the years if you keep the weeds mowed.

Laura F (z9FL) Thanks. I'll inquire about it at Lowe's or Home Depot.

Finely manicured lawns are traditional in most gardens, but science shows that they’re very detrimental to the natural environment. For that reason and many others, my wife Suzanne and I have removed the extensive but boring lawn that came with the property when we bought our house in Naples, Florida (Zone 10b). We replaced the half-acre lawn with several beds of native Florida flowering shrubs, blooming ground covers, bromeliads, wildflowers, grasses and other plants which benefit wildlife, while simultaneously beautifying the garden. As a result, we save a lot of work and the great expense of repeatedly watering our property. The only times we use the hose now is when we have an extensive period of drought.Like many Floridians, we live in a private community with a Home Owner’s Association. Almost all HOAs have strict rules about what you can and can’t plant in your own home’s garden. Most of them specify how carefully you must maintain your large and well-mowed lawn. That’s why we chose to buy a home in a community without rigid rules, so we’re free to landscape our property to make it look as Mother Nature intended. Although most of our neighbors still keep their standard lawns, our garden looks so strikingly attractive by comparison that several neighbors have set sections aside to create colorful wildflower beds like ours.Most lawns require artificial fertilizers, chemical pesticides, weed-killing poisons and other dangerous chemicals that sooner or later permeate the soil and seep into streams and lakes. This man-made damage could kill the area’s native plants, butterflies and other beneficial insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and small mammals. Home owners who hire commercial lawn services to regularly mow the lawn and spray or soak these chemicals into their gardens are spending their money to cause all the deaths. Gardeners who do the work themselves are just as responsible. Converting lawns to flower beds, wildflowers or other plantings would save the home owner lots of money or time and labor.That’s one of the subjects taught in the free gardening classes scheduled by our large and growing Gardeners of Southwest Florida group. Over 1,300 families with gardens around Naples and Fort Myers are current members of the group, and more are always welcome. Everything in the group is free: instant membership, gardening classes, light snacks, soft drinks, etc. Two-hour classes are scheduled on weekends two or three times a month throughout the year, often taught by professional horticulturists. They take place in the gardens of a different group member each time, so that members and their guests can learn about each host’s favorite plants and gardening techniques. Hundreds of photos and full details of the previous 123 classes and upcoming classes are on the group’s extensive
and informative website at www.meetup.com/FloridaGardeners. Gardeners who join can meet friendly local members like the ones who attended a recent class in our garden’s screened enclosure: At right, Peter Kacalanos and Suzanne Cherney, group leaders, Gardeners of Southwest Florida

I have Bahia in the front and most of the back. Some some of the back is zoysia. It turns brown in the winter and greens up when the rains start. I don't fertilize, slather with pesticides, or water, except for over spray around the garden and fruit trees. Nobody else around here messes with fertilizer either. We don't need it growing any faster than it does. Unless your ground is really sterile, you don't need a lot of additives. Too many people throw way too much fertilizer on their lawn. Bahia is also the recommended base grass for pastures. Turf farmers water their fields, but I can't remember any ranchers watering or futzing over pasture.

petersuzanne2 - Thanks for the info. We decided to leave the weeds and not bother with the lawn. We have loads of butterflies on the assorted shrubs and flowers we planted.

Too bad you didn't post this in the Lawn forum back in May.

1/2 acre is toward the larger side of normal, but everyone has a limit to their lawn hobby. Find some Floratam St Augustine at a nursery. Buy whatever you can get for $10 and place those pieces into shady spots in the lawn area. They will establish in the full sun, but they will take much faster in the shade. Water them lightly a couple times a day until the roots knit into the ground/sand. Then you can back off on the frequency. You can either mow it weekly (at the mower's highest setting) or not, but the grass will spread once it becomes established. Normally it will spread linearly 15 feet in all directions with runners over top of the soil. That is pretty sparse with the first runners, but the next year those runners spread another 15 feet in all directions to fill in the gaps. By the second year each of the first 15 foot spread areas should be dense turf. Unmowed St Augustine will grow up to 32 inches tall. Once it gets above 18 inches it should never need to be irrigated or fertilized as it will get all the moisture and nutrients from the extremely deep root system. However, spouses and neighbors will have a say in how tall you allow the grass to get. If you mow, you can skip and mow every other week easily. Always mow at the highest setting. When mowed high and watered once a week (rain or irrigation) in the summer, St Aug should dominate all the other grasses and grassy weeds. You will still have problems with broadleaf weeds requiring spot spray with an atrazine herbicide in April. Fertilize on Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. Make at least one of those applications an organic fertilizer.

petersuzanne2 I'm more north of you and so have slightly different growing conditions here. It's sub-tropical 9-A. We can get cold down to 25F in the winter. Just about everyone I know has lost plants over the winter. I would not live where there is an HOA if you gave me a house in one of these places.

dchall_san_antonio - If we change our minds we'll look into this grass also. But as it stands now, I think we'll leave good-enough alone. As the wife said, we're not getting any younger. The flowers and small veggie garden are enough to care for.