So the deal is the northern grasses do not grow in the south and vice versa. By "decent grass" I assume you mean a blend of Kentucky bluegrass and fescue. The answer is no. Those die in the FL heat.

Hybrid bermuda grass, like TIF 419, can be mowed very low and makes a very nice lawn for bare feet. I'm following a guy from Australia who mows his putting green lawn at 3mm high, but you have to mow like that every day. For you, you could get away with mowing at the mower's lowest setting 2x per week during the growing season and 3x per week in the spring.

Can you post some pictures of your spiky grass? Perhaps you have some good grass interspersed with spiky weeds like nutsedge. The best lawn pictures are taken on a cloudy day or in the shade. Get as close as you can - 6 inches is about right. You could also post one from 6 feet to show a bigger picture.

Ok here are a couple shots of the grass...the second shot is by my mailbox and seems to be struggling? We’ve had rain lately so not like it’s dry?

The first picture is of a surprisingly great looking stand of St Augustine turf. There are some things I see in it. There are a couple seed heads from a foreign grass. I would ignore those for now, because when you mow St Augustine at the mower's highest setting, it usually wipes out all the other grasses in the mix. But there are also a few minor signs of a fungal disease. The best cure I have found for that is ordinary corn meal. You can get that at your local feed store in 50-pound bags for under $10. The application rate is 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Corn meal is also an organic fertilizer, so that answers your other question. If you tell me where you are I can get you a map to all the feed stores in your area, so you can call for availability and price. You also have an amusing amount of oak acorns in your soil. Maybe it is the acorns you are feeling that seem spiky. Organic fertilizer is the solution for acorns.

The second picture looks either over watered (by a LOT) or underwatered. I'm going with underwatered because it is between an oak tree and pavement. Both of those elements tends to cause dryness in the soil. If you have a soaker hose, turn that on to a trickle for up to a full day and see if it improves.

Always mulch mow St Augustine at the mower's highest setting. Always (unless you are going to level it). I often skip mowing a week or two to let it grow up taller against the lower growing weedy grasses. Taller grass also has much better drought tolerance due to deeper roots in the soil/sand. I've seen wild St Augustine growing up to 32 inches high in the sand dunes on the Texas coast. I have grown it myself at 32 inches. Once it gets above about 20 inches, then you can completely ignore it - no watering, no fertilizer, and of course, no mowing. The problem with that is the neighbors cannot seem to ignore it, so there you go.

I’m in central Florida Orlando area, also this hasn’t been mowed in a month! Lol! But I have HOA so I think I can only let it grow so much...when I moved here all the grass looked like the dry patch by the tree..so I mowed it and watered well then let it go and haven’t done a thing since...I’ve always believed that a ‘taller’ grass is a healthier grass so figured it couldn’t hurt to really let fly for a while...but it is definitely time to mow it a bit...great info on the acorns and on the cornmeal for that matter...this tree produces SO MANY acorns I can’t take it! I have to sweep my driveway and sidewalk multiple times a week and there’s still hundreds of them falling daily...worst things ever tbh.

Click here for the feed stores near you. Concentrate on the stores that deal with horses or other farm animals. Pet stores that call themselves feed stores often don't carry the materials we use as organic fertilizer. If they say they have corn meal for $30 per bag, that's the wrong stuff for dealing with fungus. The expensive stuff is corn gluten meal. It is a great fertilizer, but not for anti fungal.

When you use the corn meal, you'll see results in 3 weeks. But, you really don't have much of an issue, so it will mostly look like you fertilized. Do the entire lawn. If you accidentally use too much, that's not a problem. Also corn meal does not need to be watered in to prevent damage. It does need to eventually get moist to go to work, though.

Real grass doesn’t grow here. Only this stuff. Don’t walk in it. The result could be a flea infestation in your house. The only rugs that I have in the house now are those tiny bath mats from IKEA that can go right into the washing machine. We have the lawns sprayed monthly and inside we only use Terro (borax) - for the ant infestation - no insecticides.

Margie, normally I would ask you to start a new topic to discuss your lawn/flea issues, but this topic is short enough that we don't have to reread a lot of stuff first, and it seems to be fairly inactive. So, what is "this stuff", the grass to which you refer? What is real grass in your mind?

As for St Augustine and fleas, I am not sure what the things is with fleas, but I've had dogs and outdoor cats ever since I've had houses in the San Antonio (since 1992) and surrounding areas, and I have never had fleas. I stopped using flea products on the pets about 15 years ago. Now I live in the country with deer literally everywhere. The cats are our catching rats and mice in the fields. The dogs are walked in the deer's romping grounds, where there should be ticks and fleas, but the dogs never seem to get pests. My sense is that they are picking up some pests on the walks but when they get back to the St Augustine (organic fertilizer with no insecticides EVER), the fleas and/or ticks go away. This is totally unscientific, but it's been a long time. Once we adopted a puppy that was covered in fleas. COVERED. We bathed him in a bin many times to get the fleas off. We did a pretty good job, but he still had to have a few. Eventually they disappeared.

My advice would be to use only organic fertilizer, as I suggested to the OP above, and completely stop spraying insecticide in the yard.