We had some friends who had a lawn that looked way worse. They used a lawn service for a year and then took over doing it themselves. The change was amazing.

The grass you have looks more like Centipede than St. Augustine. Do some research on Centipede lawns. That can be grown from seed. More sunlight will make for a better lawn automatically. Step one is learning best cultural practices, mowing height, water, fertilizing for the grass species you have to make a healthy lawn that will out compete weeds. A chemical assault with weed killers that will end up in your waterways is a last resort. As long as you have a healthy green lawn area, there is no need for it to be pristine and perfectly weed free by dousing it with herbicides, particularly if you have children or pets who will be rolling around in it.

Wow very nice advise and work Yardvaark!

It looks like St Augustine (not centipede) to me. The blunt blade tips are the clue. Have you ever seen seed heads on the grass? If you could describe those, that would cinch it. Also if it seems to thrive in the shade, that makes it St Augustine.

Here is picture of St Augustine seed stems.

So to me it looks like neglected St Augustine. It needs to be mowed a lot higher and fertilized to restore it to normal density. Reset the mower deck to the highest setting. If you want to fertilize with organics (which I have been using since 2002), you could do that now. If you're interested in organics, let us know and well give you some tips. If not, then wait a month to fertilize with chemical fertilizer. Or you could fertilize at half the bag rate now and half in a month.

You could spray an atrazine type herbicide to kill the weeds in the grass. Here's one that is readily available (Walmart).

Use that now (mid April), once, and put it away until next year. If you missed some weeds, it is better to wait and not overdose the lawn on this stuff.

If you don't already know what deep and infrequent watering is, search this forum.

Thanks for all the great pointers!

I've never seen seeds in the grass and am familiar with what the centipede seed head.

I rarely have to mow the grass because it barely grows and when I do mow the deck is set at a high height, no scalping done here.

We would be 100% up for fertilizing with organics. My wife hates when I pour chemicals all over the yard, but I sometimes feel like they just work better, but am totally open to whatever will make our grass not suck. Send the recommendations over and I'll do it this weekend if I can.

Thanks again.

Looking for input on naming the grass types here. Took pics of 3 different areas of grass in my yard.
1st pic?
2nd & 3rd pic?
4th pic?