Well, you have been getting advice that conflicts with what we have learned here over the years. You say you want to do everything right. Here are the lessons learned from years of reading Internet gardening forums. 1. NEVER rototill in preparation for laying seed or sod. 2. You can sod any day of the year. 3. Palmetto is a relatively poor variety. Floratam is the one you really want. So that bad news is that you wasted time and money preparing the soil. The good news is you can still have the best looking lawn in the neighborhood starting from where you are. Before the sod arrives, go out and water the soil completely. Water for at least an hour. This will settle the soil that is currently fluffy. After the soil settles some, level it again using a rake or filling in with sand/soil. Try not to raise the surface of the soil by blanket top dressing. All you want to do is fill the holes. Then water it again to settle the new surface. You can get the most level surface by dragging a piece of weighted chain link fence over the soil. That tool will loosen the high spots and drag high soil into the low spots that you cannot see. Then after your sod goes down, rent a water fillable roller to push the sod down to the surface of the soil. Roots from the sod will not grow through the air to reach the soil. The sod has to be touching everywhere. Since you cannot afford a sprinkler, go to Home Depot and get a Vigoro water hose timer. Then get as many oscillating sprinklers as you need to cover your lawn all at the same time. Then go to Sears and get Craftsman brand hoses to connect to the timer and the sprinklers (Sears' hoses do not leak at the fittings if you tighten them properly). You might need splitters to feed all the hoses out of the timer. I like the big green and black ones from Lowe's. Set your timer to go off every day, morning, noon, and night, for 10 minutes each time. You need to do this so the sod will knit to the underlying soil. If you do this for three weeks, the roots will be in and you're off to the races. After the roots are in you can back off on the watering. Ultimately you want to back off to watering once every week in the summer heat and once or twice a month the rest of the year. Use your timer to do this. I was going to lose my lawn this year until I got the timer rigged up. Mulch mow St Augustine at the mower's highest setting. Weld the adjusters in place so that your well meaning brother in law doesn't come by some day to do you a favor and he scalps your nice lawn. St Aug never needs to be scalped. Just mowing at the highest setting will give you the best looking lawn in the neighborhood. I fertilize with organic fertilizer 5 times per year on the federal holidays. I start on Washington's Birthday and end on Thanksgiving. If you use synthetic you can follow the same schedule except skip 4th of July...and also don't do the first one until after you have mowed real grass for the second time in the spring. If you don't want to spend the money on new hoses, cut the male ends of your current hoses off and replace them with the black plastic repair ends from Lowe's. The stamped brass fittings are the worst. The Sears brass fittings are slightly better. I really prefer the black plastic male fittings for all my hoses. They seal tight every time.

From my research, it is NOT recommended to cut St Augustine that low - it stresses the grass even more. The clippings are always mulched in by my mower and the grass has thrived. A healthy lawn will fill in the brown areas during the warmer weather. I cut mine all year at 3.5 - 4.0". There is some residual brown in the lawn, but it doesn't look too bad. I water once a week in summer and about every 10 days in winter (when it doesn't rain). This is the handiest picture that I have of our lawn. You can see in the shrub beds how tall the grass is.

We had scotts lawn service come out and they've treated the lawn for weeds twice, fertilized twice and aerated the lawn. However prior to doing any of that, the lawn still looked exactly as it does in my pictures. We've also had 10+ inches of rainfall and it continues to rain all this week. They mentioned no sign of chinch bugs or disease. Perhaps I should check the pH and apply Lime if necessary? This post was edited by VinceFLA904 on Wed, May 22, 13 at 17:12

Large lawn in the Heights? Wow. That's something I don't see after growing up there through high school by 290 and 610. I suppose that Scott's Organic fertilizer from Lowe's or Home Depot would be sufficient at a minimum. Who cares about the weeds? Just mow high (3-4 inches) and you will be fine. That's what we do at my mom's house few miles from you and it's the greenest lawn on the block during the winter and it's hardly ever watered during the summer. What kind of garden? Mulching is the best way to conserve the water and improve the soil dramatically. Look for tree trimmers around Houston and ask if they would dump a load of wood chips. That saves you a few hundreds of dollars. I don't really know where in houston to get compost for free. As far as I'm concerned LETCO (Living Earth Technology) has the best compost in Houston for bulk. It does help a lot. One cubic yard per 1000 sqft is all you need. It's the delivery fee and fuel surcharge that suck so if you have a truck or a trailer with sidewalls, it's great. Fortunately, it's only one time application. All you have to do is feed the lawn with organic fertilizer every 3 months. Nothing to it. There is two organic places in Houston... Wabash feed store off Washington nearby Memorial Park and Southwest Fertilizer off Chimney Rock (i think) outside 610 loop not too far from the Galleria. My preference is soybean meal but I don't know how much they cost there. I think I saw it at Southwest fertilizer but that's over a year ago.