Florida-Friendly Lawn Care: Your Guide to a Beautiful Yard
Florida doesn’t make it easy to have a beautiful lawn.
Sandy soil means water and fertilizer drain right through. Watering restrictions limit the amount of irrigation you can do. Chinch bugs and grubs invite themselves to your all-you-can-eat lawn buffet. Weird weather bakes your lawn one week and drowns it in rain the next.
Before you give up and pave the whole thing in green concrete, take a minute. Caring for Florida lawn takes some work, but it’s not impossible.
What are the key secrets to lawn maintenance in Florida? Cater your care to its sandy soil needs. Don’t mow too low. Stay on top of bug infestations. Choose the best grass for Florida lawns. Water wisely.
Keep reading for the key details of Florida lawn care, including:
Dealing with sandy soil
Choose the best grass for Florida lawns
Keep your grass tall
Water wisely
Consider aeration
Banish bugs
Invest in a comprehensive lawn care maintenance program
Darn This Sandy Soil
Sandy soil doesn’t hold on to that nutritious fertilizer you feed your lawn — its porous nature lets it drain right through.
That means you need smaller, more frequent fertilizer applications for Florida lawn care.
That gives fertilizer a better chance of actually feeding the lawn’s roots instead of just draining right through into the groundwater.
Most landscaping services offer four visits a year for Florida lawn care.
That’s not enough. Tropical Gardens visits once a month for 8-10 months of the season, visiting more often and applying smaller amounts of nutrients so they can really take hold. More frequent visits allow closer attention to other issues, too, from weed control to banishing bugs.
The Best Grass for Florida Lawns
St. Augustine is the king of grass for Florida lawns, with ‘Empire’ Zoysia a close second. Happy in sand, thriving in heat, they’re top choices for good reason.
But they love water, and hogging water is frowned on around here. (People might literally frown at you.)
So we’re seeing more communities requiring at least some amount of Bahia grass in order to cut down on irrigation.
Before everybody hollers “Bahia!? What?!” at once, we know — bahia won’t win any beauty contests. It’s actually considered a pasture grass with its wild look. But it’s tough as nails.
It can grow in any soil and thrives on little water.
Chances are we’ll be seeing more of it.
Keep Your Grass Tall
That lovely St. Augustine grass so popular here in Florida is kind of picky.
It needs to be kept at 4.5 to 5 inches tall, higher than other types of grass.
If you mow it at 3.5 inches, the grass blades aren’t tall enough to shade the soil. You want your lawn’s root system to stay cool and shaded on hot sunny days.
And never remove more than a third of the leaf blade at a time when mowing, which is a good rule in general in Florida lawn maintenance. If you remove more than that, the grass will become stressed. Then you’ll become stressed. Keep everybody happy and just mow tall.
Florida Lawn Care: Watering Wisdom
Here’s what your Florida lawn wants: three separate watering sessions each week that deliver one inch of water each time.
That’s your irrigation goal for spring, summer and fall if you have St. Augustine grass. You can reduce that schedule to two days a week in winter months. Yes, county watering restrictions can shave that down to one day a month, which means, honestly, we replace a lot of sod.
Set your irrigation system for that and the rain sensor — mandatory here in Sarasota — will shut off your system if it rains and Mother Nature provided enough water.
But, this is Florida, with weather that can be kind of goofy. That means you can’t just set your irrigation controller and forget it — which is what a lot of people do.
Systems need adjusting 6-8 times a year, allowing for rainy periods and finicky temperature changes. Sometimes, that means three times in one month.
But there’s more to proper irrigation than setting your timer. Stuff happens out there.
Neglect your irrigation system, and entire zones might fail. Valves break. Heads get clogged. None of this is good.
Make regular irrigation system inspections by irrigation pros part of your Florida lawn maintenance to keep your grass healthy and green.
You Might Need Aeration
Aeration? That’s usually a foreign term to Florida lawn owners, as that sandy soil we talked about earlier is nice and loose.
But new housing developments are usually built on clay soil brought in to create a more stable foundation for building than our native sandy soil.
That means your Florida lawn care might now need to include aeration to break up that thick, compacted clay.
When your soil is compacted, your lawn can't breathe. Its roots can't take in the water and nutrients it needs to thrive.
Lawn aeration uses a cool machine to pull out tiny cores of soil from your lawn, allowing water and oxygen to get to the roots again.
It’s smart to have your Sarasota lawn care service aerate your compacted lawn once a year to keep those grass roots breathing.
Then, you might as well take advantage of all those little holes aeration left behind. Time for lawn topdressing. It’s food for your soil, a nutrient-rich layer of soil or sand blended with compost and other organics.
The blend of sand and compost top soil settles into the holes created by aeration and over time amends that compacted clay soil so lawn roots can really sink in.
Banish Bugs
Florida lawn care means keeping an eye out for bugs that love to gobble your lawn. If you just said “gross” out loud, you’re right. We’re talking slimy, wormy rude little beasts that, when you’re describing them, you have to say “piercing mouth parts.” Gross.
Chinch bugs show up during drought, from March until the end of June. These pests love hot sunny environments and St. Augustine grass. So Sarasota is one big bingo.
They insert their piercing mouth parts (gross) into the blades of grass and suck out the juice. Rude, right?
Tropical Gardens crews apply chinch bug preventive at the beginning of drought season, and that lasts for a few weeks. Then we keep an eye on things and can spray to kill the pests if needed.
Grubs move in during June and July. These lawn villains are the larvae of beetles like June bugs and Japanese beetles. The beetles lay their eggs in the ground, the eggs hatch into white, slimy, wriggly grubs, and the grubs feast on your lawn’s roots, easily destroying your lawn.
Preventive grub treatment is a key part of Florida lawn maintenance, and is included in the top two tiers of Tropical Gardens’ comprehensive lawn care programs.
Sod webworms are a threat all year long. (Overachievers.)
The destructive cycle starts with little moths that flutter over lawns in spring and summer, flying in a zigzag pattern just above the turf surface. They lay millions of tiny eggs in the grass.
When the sod webworms hatch, they’re really hungry. Then the munching begins, as they feast on grass right down to the soil.
We watch for the moths, then spray for them.
Get On a Great Residential Landscape Maintenance Program
If you’re exhausted just reading about all this Florida lawn maintenance, we get it. There’s a lot going on out there.
Hand over the pesky chores to a great Sarasota FL lawn care service that specializes in comprehensive turf care.
You want a tailored lawn care program with perfectly timed fertilizer and weed control. Add attentive irrigation maintenance to help ensure that healthy green Florida lawn.
Need Help with Florida Lawn Care? Talk to Us
You have better things to do than watch fertilizer drain through your sandy soil and be on the lookout for slimy bugs that have piercing mouth parts.
Like, just about anything.
Get skilled experts on board who can set you up with the best variety of grass, make sure your irrigation can handle its specific water needs, and know how to offer nutrients that go straight to your lawn’s hungry roots. And we’re on top of that bug stuff, too.
Let’s get started. We’ll help you figure it all out.
Give us a call or fill out our form today! Our team of Sarasota lawn pros can’t wait to transform your Florida lawn into a green oasis that will make you proud.
