Funny thing is the Celebration is touted as being shade and drought resistant, and the shady areas I planted plugs are doing remarkably well compared to the full sun areas that seem like they get scorched my mid day-late afternoon full sun. I live in Florida and with the drought, and water restrictions with only 1 day a week watering and no watering after 8am, these plugs are struggling (full sun ones-shade plugs are doing GREAT!). I am sneaking late night water from my rainbarrel that collects rain water from my roof, but I think if the neighbors caught me using my own rainwater they would still report me. The odd thing is I think it should be legal as that is water I saved and is not being taken from the aquifer.

Funny thing about that Mimosa-my folks had lived in Fort Myers for twenty years when, upon visiting them, I pointed out this neat, puffy-looking flower growing in the turf on some hell-strip by a mall. They had never seen it! I saw it my first day down there! I guess it's safe to say, the world is composed of two types of people, those who notice plants and those who don't. To wit, if you'll allow me to take this slightly further OT- a botany professor who writes a good blog was writing about his first-day students. He would show them a photo of some scene in a forest somewhere, tropical or otherwise, and ask them to write down what they saw in the picture. Almost to a student, if there was some kind of animal in the picture, it got written down. Nobody....not one student....took note of all the plant life in the photo! And this was a botany class. Sheesh..........I don't hold out a lot of hope for our future. In any case, sunshine mimosa is one of those subtropical plants that, when I'm down in FL I like to look at and conjure up the dream of using it in the north here as an annual. Not saying that would work, or that I'm going to be doing it, but just that it always makes me think about doing so. +oM

OMG! Brazilian peppers are banned in FL if I'm not mistaken. If/when you remove those, be VERY careful to get all the seeds. Those are carried into the wetlands by birds and, well, there's a good reason they're banned. We need to ban them here, too. Mangos are simply a pain in the butt. Nobody can eat the fruit fast enough because they all ripen and fall off the tree on the same day. You go from a clean yard to literally tons of fruit on the ground overnight. Banyan trees look nice as a gigantic ornamental specimen in an even more gigantic open space. You don't have that. That's the wrong tree in the wrong place. So I guess I'm saying you need to get rid of all those trees. All of them are the wrong tree in the wrong place. The palms can stay - maybe. At 30 feet high it's not like you can enjoy the foliage. They are simply a big trunk you have to mow around. At least they are not a pest and won't interfere with grass. Okay so currently the only grass that even might survive is St Augustine, but I would focus on tree removal before spending another dime on the lawn. Any grass you install now would get torn up with tree removal. Plus if you get rid of all that shade your choices of turfgrass open up beyond just St Augustine.

What kind of seed? Where are you in FL? Are the temps in the 90s every day yet? Generally for new seed you water it 3x per day for 5-10 minutes at a time until you get 80% germination. If you put down bermuda seed, it isn't going to get to 80% until the soil heats up more. That could be another month. Whereas had you put bermuda seed down next month, it would sprout fast and be more like what you're expecting. Once the grass is mature, watering is completely different. Watering mature grass: Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, sprinkler and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so it should work for you. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall. Yes, despite 99.999% of Floridians watering every single day, this watering regimen posted above works much better than daily watering.