Well, my floratam survived 14* a few year ago but my lawn is all sun and they gave me floratam by accident. So far, it outperformed Palmetto by far in the backyard. I guess I should be lucky otherwise it'd be entirely ugly backyard with Palmetto infected with virus. To this day, I still don't understand how it got infected... I'm telling you Del Mar is a snail. It just sits there while Floratam and Palmetto quickly filled in. I'm not the only one who tried it and complained that it was too slow to fill in. Palmetto is fine as long as it is not infected with SADV. Somewhat good drought tolerance, significantly better than Del Mar and not so hardy Raleigh. According to an evaluation, Palmetto is best for shady area while Floratam is best for sunny in zone 9 (and probably 8b). Palmetto with proper fertilizing and watering, probably 1-2 feet.

I dunno. I have Floratam if that's what I have and it seems to do fine and it faced 14*F weather a couple years ago with little damage and it spreads very fast so recovery would be pretty quick. I think it is entirely based on the 1980s when it was super cold with all kinds of records that killed high percentage of Floratam however you can make them tougher by providing 3-1-2 fertilizer type in the fall and I use alfalfa pellets that happens to be 3-1-2 range. The chances we'll see that kind of weather is small in the near immediate future unless we go back to Small Ice Age so try and plug some floratam, palmetto, and sapphire and see how that go. Floratam and Sappphire by far the most agressive spreader so they make great great great plugs that you can just plant 10 feet apart and they will fill in before year is over. Bermuda will be never get completely get rid of. I have some so I just live with it and life goes on.

Stpete is right. I meant to touch on that as well. From everything I've been reading, the only thing Weed/Landscape cloth is really good for is burning a hole in your wallet. It doesn't last and it doesn't prevent weeds any better than newspaper (it may even be worse). And when the landscape cloth tears and breaks down, it provides nothing to the soil underneath, it just makes for a big job further down the road as you have to pull it up and replace it. Newspaper breaks down over time, feeds the soil and attracts earthworms, which then eat the newspaper, turning it into free fertilizer! Cardboard is another option, but it takes longer to decompose and is harder to cut through if you want to put in a plant. If I pulled up all my mulch, there would be a jigsaw of newspaper and cardboard in my beds. I tried putting the cardboard in areas where I was fairly sure I wouldn't be putting any plants and put the newspaper down in the spots where I might some day install a shrub or something.

1. Remove the existing grass and till the yard Never till in preparation for a lawn. When you rototill the bottom of the tiller digs to different depths. When you level the top, that will give you different depths of fluffy soil. When that soil settles, it will settle to the profile of the non-level layer of untilled soil underneath. But yes, remove the current grass. Best way to do that is with several applications of roundUp at 1-week intervals. Water heavily in between to get as many weeds sprouted as possible. 2. spread nice quality top soil/compost mix Nope. Your current soil is the best soil there is. All you have to do to fix it is feed it with the alfalfa. Unless you have drainage issues you wish to fix, then adding or removing top soil should be forbidden. 3. apply alfalfa fertilizer Great idea. 4. Install st augustine sod. For the shady area in the picture, St Aug would be good. Can you get a mower in there? St Aug is mowed at the mower's highest setting. Bermuda (your back lawn???) is mowed at your mower's lowest setting. Don't get those two mixed up. The reason you have weeds is your turf is not dense enough to keep the weeds out. Bermuda in the shade will never be dense enough to keep weeds out. St Aug needs to be mowed very high to keep weeds out. Second reason (maybe) you have weeds is watering too frequently. The soil should dry out completely at the surface before watering again. In the winter that means once a month max. In the summer that might mean as much as once every 7 days unless you are having an unusual drought coupled with dry winds and weak/sandy soil with pounding sunlight (like Las Vegas). If your grass will not go that length of time without water, then you are not watering long enough when you do water.