Denise, we had bahia at our last 2 houses, and I know I'm late to the discussion, but I wanted to add my pros and cons. Like everyone has said, bahia is tougher, impossible to kill, very drought tolerant, and overall, a much better grass for Florida than St. Augustine. The only downside is the 2 foot tall seed heads which DO need mowing, even when the rest of the lawn is fine. However, in zone 9, you only have problems with those over the summer. And if you can stand to ignore them for 2 weeks (skip one weekend mowing), you won't need to reseed your lawn each year, as it will happily do it all by itself. Other than deliberately skipping a week or so to let it reseed, you will have to mow the lawn every weekend during the high growth seasons. When it is getting enough rain, it grows fast. But when comparing it to St. Augustine grass, it wins hands down every time, except for those who prefer the LOOK of St. Augustine lawns. With the growing water crisis in our state, and the growing acceptance of the fact that tons of lawn fertilizer and other chemicals are bad for all of us (for lots of reasons), I say if you have to have a lawn at all, go bahia. (And your sod people are right...it IS pronounced buh-HAY-uh.) One other thing...there ARE a couple of other choices out there. We have a lawn on one side of our house that has been taken over by what I believe to be centipede grass. It is very pretty. Grows low to the ground like St. Augustine, but has a finer blade. Doesn't seed. Doesn't need extra fert or chemicals. Is very lush and green, stays green all winter, and doesn't seem to suffer overly much in dry weather. I've never seen it for sale anywhere, but we had a large area of it at another house, and it was equally trouble free. I tried to learn more about it online, but can't find any pictures that look just like it. And the pictures of centipede that I found did NOT look like it. My neighbor, who is also a Florida native (hey, that means there are TWO of us in Sanford!!) says that it is the same grass they had when she was growing up (she's in her 70's) and that they all called it centipede, too. And it was the ONLY lawn people had in her day, before the introduction of St. Augustine. So if your sod people have any info on that, even if it is called something else by now, it might be worth checking out, too. It doesn't grow tall so doesn't need mowing as frequently as bahia. Just one more thought to cloud the issue even more, haha. Good luck! Marcia

Don't till, it's not necessary. My advice would be to skip any herbicide this spring and let the weeds come in full force. You can put down any remaining KY31 seed as well. Mow the weeds/KY31 through the summer to keep it looking nice. Round-up everything in the fall and re-seed.

I'm not sure our lawn was originally seeded as a lawn. If any seed was used, it was probably for pasture or hayfield and I don't think it has ever been fertilized or weed killers applied. Stripped sod goes into a dirt pile to decompose for other projects. But we usually only strip sod for quickly made beds without using the lasagna method and that is usually with a new perennial bed. Groundskeeper, I haven't had a problem. My best beds were built a year ahead lasagna style to a height of about 24" which settled to about 12" over the winter. Now I maintain them slightly mounded. Winter squash went into my shallow, hastily built bed but I made planting hills with composted manure and fertilizer. We had a good crop. Some tomato plants went into another shallow area and did fine (Opalka paste tomatoes). I suspect roots can pierce the paper even in the first year. I recently cleaned up my pepper patch. Some varieties are very shallow rooted but some grow tall with thick stems and deep roots that had to be dug up with a spading fork.

It's about 20' x20' area. Probably would need to build up 12 - 18" with dirt. With that amount of dirt, I'll need to resod... which goes back to the original question- can I reuse sod if I use a sod cutter and stack the pieces to the side while we add more ground.