Hello everyone,

I have been lurking around these forums for a couple of months and decided to post for some suggestions.

This season is my first season taking care of a lawn.

I live in Jacksonville, FL (Zone 9a).

I first moved in to my new home in October 2016. The yard was a blanket of brown, but I noticed the other yards had significant green.

My mom decided to take over the lawn care service contract from the previous owners. The sprinklers were absolutely over watering. Someone did not know how to program the sprinklers and they were running through 4 cycles once or twice a week even during the winter. It was set for 4 am so I never noticed. My mother had someone cutting the grass every other week until we moved in.

So in May, I have (mostly) taken over the lawn care. I have gradually been convincing my mom to wean off the lawn service company.

I told her to contact the lawn care company and tell them to stop treating the front yard except for spot treating weeds. Their insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers were not working. Grassy weeds are immune to their treatments. Other weeds turn yellow but don't seem to completely die out.

I got what green is here on my own. They said to water each zone for 45 minutes and that was way too much. As I get more results, it's easier to get my mom to let go. We have a contract so it seems like a waste of money to her, but I feel like the real waste would be having them potentially negate my work. Once their contract expires, I will take over the back as well for next season.

That's the long prologue. To get to the story:

In May, I started with raking up enough grass clippings to fill four bags. Some people said to leave it. Some said it would all come back in spring. I didn't really get how grass with no roots would plant itself and green up. I couldn't imagine it decomposing any time soon.

In late May/early June, I decided to jump start my lawn care with some Miracle Gro lawn food that goes with their hose end sprayer.

For July, I decided to go completely organic and would like to maintain this permanently. Only as a last result, if organics become too time-consuming/complicated/expensive or the weeds and fungus issues are not resolved, then I will resort to just spraying the yard with a fungicide and an insecticide.

On July 8, I laid down a 50 pound bag of alfalfa pellets on my 1300 sq ft front lawn, thinking it would be a jump start for organics. Unfortunately, I did not read until later about starting with 10 pounds because of low microbe populations. I also did not read about using compost as a microbe jump start/bio-activator until later.

Still, I've noticed benefits. I can walk on my grass with shorts and no bug spray and not get bitten up. Before the alfalfa treatment, my mom and I would feel bites through our clothes, but never see any bugs. That has now ceased.

WATERING

For watering, I've done the best I could with the sprinklers. I diagnosed the problem with the program running 4 times. I used rain water gauges to figure out the water. Unfortunately, I do have a problem area. The center of my main yard is very bare and growing a weed that I think is a sedge but others have called it quack grass and torpedo grass. No one agrees on what it is.

Five different sprinkler heads over lap in this center area. I turned off two heads completely in zone 3 but there are still three heads in zone 4 that water this area. I can't turn any off or lower the pressure without denying water to a significant part of the yard. At some point, the system will need to be redesigned and re-zoned to really work. But all in all, I get about an inch or a little less in all main zones, and I've decreased the water in this center area.

Living in North Florida, the rain has made watering mostly unnecessary. A tropical storm dropped a deluge of inches over a three day period in June. The previous week, we had daily thunderstorms. I've developed that fungus with the spots on the blades. I wonder if fungus is causing the bare patches. The spots have been there for weeks/maybe months, and I have not noticed any significant spreading. The bare spots and brown areas in the pics below have always been there with no spreading, so I think they may be nutrient deficiency. With the alfalfa laid down, I'm looking to see if the stolon will fill in and what happens to them when they get there. The only new brown spots/patches comes from internet companies digging up the yard to lay cables.

On Monday, I will be calling feed stores to see who stocks cornmeal. My understanding is to expect improvements with the spots and brown grass in three weeks. If the brown grass does not improve, I will continue with more cornmeal once a month for another month or two. Either from the anti-fungal and/or the fertilizer properties, it should green up. So whatever is causing the brown grass, cornmeal should help unless it's from bugs.

MOWING

This has been a tough spot. I have back problems. I've been researching electric, self-propelling mulching lawn mowers but cannot find one that mows 4 inches. I don't have the space to store a riding lawn mower and the costs are too high to purchase any time soon even if I did. I would have to save up and the money that could be saved is being sucked up into paying someone to mow.

I have a new guy coming Monday. The old guy mowed and the grass had brown tips, ever blade in the front and back. The new guy will be coming weekly. I don't know if he can do mulch mowing. (They usually don't.) The previous guys did not. I just have long grass blade clippings sitting on my lawn. Also, I'm concerned about the weeds. Mowing once a week will keep the seed heads from developing though. But having weed clippings does not seem okay. Not to mention what may be on the blades from mowing other lawns.

Can my sandy soil become rich enough to decompose clippings that are not mulched? Or should I rake every several mowings?

My main goal is really to get my St. Augustine nice and thick and at least keep weeds at bay for now. So that means getting a good stand up weed puller (suggestions?), getting my initial cornmeal/compost application down, mowing once a week, then after a second cornmeal-only application a month later, I can get back to my alfalfa pellets (at 25 lbs/1000 sq ft) if things are improving. I would like to alternate between alfalfa and cornmeal during the rest of the season.

I had success pouring unsulfured blackstrap molasses on a nutsedge. I put some molasses in a glass with a little water and poured it over the base after the lawn had been cut. It's been weeks, it's getting black, and it has not grown at all.

Below are pictures of my yard and the various weeds. They are most prolific in the areas bordering the concrete (drive way, side walk, street, walkway).

It is now July 17. So it's too soon to tell what more the alfalfa treatment will bring. And the cornmeal still needs to be purchased tomorrow.

Left side of main yard:

From a different angle:

Right side of main yard:

weed 1: a kind of stalky base. I thought it was nutsedge. My previous lawn guy said it was torpedo grass. And the lawn care company said it was quack grass.

weed 2:

weed 3: It's a little right of center. It looks like it's growing out of a weed the lawn company spot treated. Is it correct that this is yellow nutsedge?

weed 4: