It is Bahia, I can tell because in the photos you can see the black V seed heads. I will guess you live below the mason Dixon line or if in Cali, south of SF. I just reread your post, your in FL. This is an OK low maintenance grass. No need to fertilize, but if you do, it will grow fast and need to mow twice a week. If you leave the seed heads on for over 2 months they will become viable seeds. You can use 2,4-d as a herbicde. Metsulferon will kill it, along with many other herbicdes. I would suggest to self install an irrigation system. Then decide what kind of grass you want. Many people in florida have Bahia for lawns. If you keep this as your lawn, I will suggest that you mow it high, 2-3 inches as this type of grass is an open grower. The lower you mow, the more sun gets to the soil, the more weeds you have. My house had this when I moved in, I installed irrigation, killed off the lawn with round up and plugged an empire zoysia lawn. I would suggest that if you do not like yard and lawn work, keep the bahia, if not, I would look into bermuda (princess or riveria), zoysia, and last, if you have no traffic in your yard (dogs or kids) and you like the spongy feel go with SA.

Patti, I only live a couple hours from you so maybe what I do will work. Trim the dry growth off of them in the early spring before the new growth gets going. You might be able to do that now if they new sprouts are short. The old wood is the strongest and thats what I use as my guide. The older taller wood is usually wrapped around the support and I will leave it if there is good growth. If the vine seems unstable I'll cut it back or use a large twist tie to prop it in place. Once late spring arrives it will take life of its own and start wrapping itself up the support again. If it loves the soil where you have it, fine a good large support for a bigger plant. If the plant is trimmed and the old flowers plucked off, it usually will show more flowers in the fall. Keep the clematis feet in the shade and the head in the sun.

Where are you located? Depending on location, some turf grasses do go dormant in winter, producing that brown, dead look. And many times, homeowners with those sorts of lawns do overseed with another type of temporary grass to maintain color in winter. If in a completely different location, what you are illustrating with the photo could be another, more complicated lawn issue that would require an entirely different approach. Knowing where you are located is really critical to providing any meaningful advice Also, that photo is from too geat a distance to determine if weeds play a role at all in the brown appearance. Can you get a closer image of what exactly is growing there??

The physical make-up of your soil can be critical to your plants ability to achieve as much of its genetic potential as possible. Advising what soil to use is not easy, given the amount of consideration the question deserves. You should use a soil you can water at will to beyond the point of complete saturation, so you're flushing the soil of accumulating salts each time you water; this, w/o you needing to be concerned the soil will remain soggy so long it limits root function and/or wrecks root health. To a very large degree, your soil choice + the size of the root mass after root pruning dictates what size pot you use can or should be. Some things I wrote that should be helpful in answering your questions: What is a good soil? From my perspective, an appropriate medium is a medium that allows us to water to beyond the point of saturation at will, so we're flushing the dissolved solids (salts) that are present in tapwater and fertilizer solutions. These dissolved solids are left behind and accumulate in soils whenever we're forced to water in sips, which is commonly employed as a strategy in order to avoid the sogginess that limits root function and wrecks root health. It's important to realize that a healthy plant is not possible w/o a healthy root system. If you have established goals that include healthy and attractive plants, it's critical that you have a plan to avoid the limitations imposed by over-watering and an accumulation of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil solution. Not every grower fully understands the dilemmic issues associated with inappropriate soils that force the plant to pay a vitality tax resultant of an unhealthy amount of water being retained for extended periods when we water correctly – which is to say, when we flush the soil to limit salt build-up. On one hand, we have the potential for over-watering, and when we act to avoid it by offering dribs and drabs of water here and there, we have high salt levels to deal with. It's easy to see how we all might benefit from use of a soil that allows us to water so we're flushing away excess salts without limiting our plant's vitality via waterlogged soils. What size pot? How large a container ‘can’ or ‘should’ be, depends on the relationship between the mass of the plant material you are working with and your choice of soil. We often concern ourselves with "over-potting" (using a container that is too large), but "over-potting" is a term that arises from a lack of a basic understanding about the relationship we will look at, which logically determines appropriate container size. It's often parroted that you should only move up one container size when "potting-up". The reasoning is, that when potting up to a container more than one size larger, the soil will remain wet too long and cause root rot issues, but it is the size/mass of the plant material you are working with, and the physical properties of the soil you choose that determines both the upper & lower limits of appropriate container size - not a formulaic upward progression of container sizes. In many cases, after root pruning a plant, it may even be appropriate to step down a container size or two, but as you will see, that also depends on the physical properties of the soil you choose. It's not uncommon for me, after a repot/root-pruning to pot in containers as small as 1/5 the size as that which the plant had been growing in prior to the work. Plants grown in ‘slow’ (slow-draining/water-retentive) soils need to be grown in containers with smaller soil volumes so that the plant can use water quickly, allowing air to return to the soil before root issues beyond impaired root function/metabolism become a limiting factor. We know that the anaerobic (airless) conditions that accompany soggy soils quickly kill fine roots and impair root function/metabolism. We also know smaller soil volumes and the root constriction that accompany them cause plants to both extend branches and gain o/a mass much more slowly - a bane if rapid growth is the goal - a boon if growth restriction and a compact plant are what you have your sights set on. Conversely, rampant growth can be had by growing in very large containers and in very fast soils where frequent watering and fertilizing is required - so it's not that plants rebel at being potted into very large containers per se, but rather, they rebel at being potted into very large containers with a soil that is too slow and water-retentive. This is a key point. We know that there is an inverse relationship between soil particle size and the height of the perched water table (PWT) in containers. As particle size increases, the height of the PWT decreases, until at about a particle size of just under 1/8 inch, soils will no longer hold perched water. If there is no perched water, the soil is ALWAYS well aerated, even when the soil is at container capacity (fully saturated). So, if you aim for a soil (like the gritty mix) composed primarily of particles larger than 1/16", there is no upper limit to container size, other than what you can practically manage. The lower size limit will be determined by the soil volume's ability to allow room for roots to ’run’ and to furnish water enough to sustain the plant between irrigations. Bearing heavily on this ability is the ratio of fine roots to coarse roots. It takes a minimum amount of fine rootage to support the canopy under high water demand. If the container is full of large roots, there may not be room for a sufficient volume of the fine roots that do all the water/nutrient delivery work and the coarse roots, too. You can grow a very large plant in a very small container if the roots have been well managed and the lion's share of the rootage is fine. You can also grow very small plants, even seedlings, in very large containers if the soil is fast (free-draining and well-aerated) enough that the soil holds no, or very little perched water. I have just offered clear illustration why the oft repeated advice to ‘resist potting up more than one pot size at a time’, only applies when using heavy, water-retentive soils. Those using well-aerated soils are not bound by the same restrictions. As the ht and volume of the perched water table are reduced, the potential for negative effects associated with over-potting are diminished in a direct relationship with the reduction - up to the point at which the soil holds no (or an insignificant amount) of perched water and over-potting pretty much becomes a non-issue. Al