Good Morning and Welcome To MOT-Morning Open Thread
I know that facing a winter in the northern climes will test a person's stamina in a multitude of ways and not that it makes me a veteran, but I did spend a winter in Waukegan, Illinois back in the early 70s which gave me a pretty decent taste of what a person must endure. I am also quite familiar with the "A Southerner Moves Up North"
joke wherein a southerner begins a diary chronicling his first winter up north. The only jokes I've seen about northerners moving down south pertain to food, culture and language differences and seem to have been written by northerners themselves. It seems the same kind of "joke" could be written about a northerner attempting to grow the perfect lawn down south which is considered fine entertainment for us when a transplant buys a home and moves into the neighborhood.
First up is grass. There is only one type of grass that will successfully grow in Florida and that is St. Augustine grass. You can only purchase St. Augustine by pallets of sod or by plugs. Yes, there is seed, but fuggedaboutit, it's not happening that way down here! But, before you start putting down grass you have to prep the yard. If you want to ensure any kind of success you have to rototill the entire area and follow that up with removing all grass, weeds, stones, roots, etc. Then you must level the ground which may require removing some of the soil or redistributing some of the soil. Next, you must install an in-ground sprinkler system and it's wisest to dig a well for irrigation rather than hooking into city water. There is no way you can have a lawn down here without a sprinkler system. It's a fact. Now you're ready for the sod.
If you opt for laying sod end to end and covering your entire lawn you will need to purchase sod by the pallet. A typical pallet covers 450 - 500 square feet and will cost around $125.00 per pallet. Laying the sod is back breaking, nasty, dirty work and requires daily watering for at least a month before the sod "takes".
The second option is putting in plugs of sod. You can purchase 36 plugs of St Augustine grass for around $18.00 and you will need to purchase a sod plugger tool. Although it resembles a pogo stick, I can assure you it's not near as much fun. You simply place the sod plugger in your desired location and step on it, pull it up along with the soil it has captured and put the soil next to the hole it has created. Repeat 3700 times. Oh, and when you encounter roots, that may require the use of a more aggressive tool - a sawzall comes to mind. Once all your holes are made you sprinkle a bit of fertilizer into each hole and follow with a plug of grass, carefully tamping down the grass and filling in the sides with the leftover soil you have placed next to the hole. Follow up with a month of daily watering and in the days and weeks that follow you can watch the weeds grow up around each piece of sod and attempt to choke the life out of the grass. It's great fun!
Assuming you've been successful - "success" is generally achieved with around three complete attempts - and your well hasn't gone dry, the pump motor hasn't frozen up when you failed to properly protect it during the 10 days of winter and you weren't arrested for the multiple watering day violations, then you get to enjoy mowing, weeding, weedwacking, edging, and the neverending battle against weeds; insects and pests; and lawn diseases and fungus. ♫ Weeds and insects and fungus, oh my. Weeds and insects and fungus. ♫
Any southern lawn worth its salt has become intimately acquainted with chinch bugs, sod webworms, mole crickets, white grubs and armyworms all of which can completely destroy every.single.blade.of.grass in your lawn. You will need to become familiar with the telltale signs of each of these critters so that you can apply the proper insecticide. What? What's that you said? One insecticide for all? HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa TM Bubbanomics
Oh my, ::still chucking:: let's move on to the weeds and some mighty fine weeds they are indeed. Dandelions, clover, dollarweed (this weed alone deserves to have a wing in the psych ward named for it), sedge grass, spurge, crabgrass and buttonweed grace the tropical lawn. Each one requiring it's own special blend of control product and here's the kicker -- the product will destroy the grass itself unless it is used strictly when temperatures are 70° and below. This means you are only able to control these weeds during the months of January through mid March. This also means that while you might be lucky enough to rid your lawn of the weeds before the growing season begins, there is nothing you can do, save pulling the weeds and some simply cannot be pulled (see note beside dollarweed), about them after the weather warms up.
If you have any hair left and are a brave soul, you can then attempt to control the fungus -- namely brown patch fungus. This stuff does not mess around as it can kill grass in a matter of hours once infected. This stuff requires the big guns, the "industrial strength" fungicide. Probably best you call the experts for this one. Follow it up with a call to your sod place to reserve a few pallets 'cause I promise you'll need them.
Let's move on to mowing, weedwacking and edging the grass during the growing season which consists of April - November. While you will only need to cut once every 10 days or so during April and early May and again from late October through November, you will cut weekly or more frequently during the other months when the average temps are 90° and over with humidity ranging at 85% and above.
Whoa...wait. Hey, where are you going? Heh, guess I scared them off and I haven't even begun to talk about the mosquitoes, no see ums, gnats, horseflies, wasps, dirt dobbers, fire ants and snakes. Oh yeah, the snakes alone deserve an entire section...