Florida Grass Tips

Florida's favorite lawn, but is St. Augustine's appeal fading?

Jerry W. Jackson | Sentinel Staff Writer
July 20, 2008

Florida's thirst for water has sparked a growing attack on St. Augustine grass, the staple sod of lawns statewide. Many landscape experts and scientists say the assault is mostly one-sided and misdirected -- a mean-spirited mow. Environmentalists and others say it is a justified, belated attack on a water-sucking vampire. Yes, for many reasons!

Some new residential communities, such as Oakland Park in west Orange County, forbid residents from planting St. Augustine, and calls to outlaw the grass are increasing.

"Reducing turf grass is a good idea for any number of reasons," said Catherine Read, a botanist and president of the Florida Native Plant Society's Central Florida chapter, which is called the Tarflower chapter after one of the state's many obscure, native plants.

Read, a landscape specialist who lives in Orlando's Hampton Park subdivision, managed to get permission from her homeowners association to strip out most of the grass in her yard and replace it with various native plants and trees and an organic vegetable garden.

"There is a statewide push on," said Rick Ehle, another member of the Florida Native Plant Society's local chapter. Ehle concedes that he used to have a St. Augustine lawn in Orlando, but gave it up a decade ago when he moved to rural Geneva in Seminole County and opted for a more natural look. Now he's trying to get rid of his remaining bahia grass.

For sure, the end is near for sprawling, glossy green lawns in Florida.

Big stretches of brown woody mulch -- no water needed -- and patches of hardy native shrubs and drought-resistant wildflowers are going to be visible in more and more communities, especially those without homeowner associations, which often mandate green lawns.

Proponents of the "back to native" movement say they are up against powerful forces, including well-financed advertising for lawn fertilizers, pesticide, riding mowers and power tools that "make it look like fun" to mow grass and manicure big lawns.

No! It works great.
"St. Augustine lawns have become the scapegoat for Florida's [water] availability and quality issues," said grass expert Barry Troutman, the Orlando-based technical-services director of East Coast operations for ValleyCrest Cos., a giant landscaping company. It's no accident that St. Augustine is by far the most common lawn grass in the state, Troutman said, because of its "nearly perfect adaptation [to] Florida's sandy soil and mixture of sun and shade."

More often than not, St. Augustine gets more water than it needs, especially during the summer, said Celeste White, a University of Florida extension-service horticulture and irrigation specialist in Orange County. "During the rainy season, you can almost shut it [your irrigation system] off, no matter what kind [of grass] you have," she said. "Pretty much everyone is over-irrigating."

Of course, not enough rain and you have problems, too. White said the summer rains that recently arrived in Central Florida came too late for some St. Augustine lawns -- including her own, which has no irrigation.

"My yard doesn't look too good," she said. But it's the first time in nine years, she noted, that she has lost some of her St. Augustine grass to dry weather, despite having no lawn sprinklers.

People who want to experiment with other types of grasses, White said, will find that they all turn brown during extremely dry weather and all suffer from various pests. "If you want green grass, you will have to irrigate," she said. "There is no perfect turf and there is no pest-free turf."

According to UF's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, "the best way to irrigate an established [St. Augustine] lawn is on an as-needed basis." When the grass begins to wilt or turn bluish-green, or fails to recover when people walk across it, UF turf scientists say, hit it with a half-inch to three-quarters of an inch of water. "Do not water again until the lawn shows signs of wilting," which could be a week, maybe two or more.

The lowdown on lawns

St. Augustine

Researchers with the University of Florida and other scientists have crossbred different grasses through the years to produce newer hybrids of St. Augustine with different growth characteristics. Some handle shade better than others or need less mowing. But the search for a truly drought-resistant strain is ongoing. As a nitrogen filter, St. Augustine grass does a better job than Bermuda or Zoysia and "blows away mulched plant beds." By soaking up nitrogen, grass reduces contamination of groundwater and runoff.

Bahia -- The second-most-common type of lawn grass in Florida, it is expected to continue spreading in popularity. A drought-tolerant plant, it can rebound from a dull, brittle brown to a fairly decent shade of pale green with just one or two good rains. Irrigation is not absolutely essential. Its main drawbacks: It does not grow as thickly as St. Augustine, and many homeowners don't think it looks as good other than as a roadside grass.

Bermuda -- Has little shade tolerance and needs more frequent mowing and maintenance. Produces a vigorous, medium-green, dense turf that is well adapted to most Florida climates and soils. It wears well, and tolerates drought and salt. It establishes rapidly and is able to outcompete most weeds. It is readily available as sod or plugs, and some improved cultivars are available as seeded varieties.

Zoysia -- Slow to establish, some versions also do not tolerate shade. Zoysia can adapt to a variety of soils and tolerates both salt and traffic. It provides an extremely dense sod that resists weed invasion. Once established, the slow growth of some varieties is an advantage because less mowing is needed. For some varieties, two growing seasons may be required for coverage when propagated by plugging or sprigging. All zoysias form a heavy thatch and require periodic renovation. Other disadvantages of older varieties include slow recovery from damage, poor growth on compacted soils, high fertility requirements and poor drought tolerance.