lawn Maintenance and Weed Control (St. Augustine: company, services, commercial)

[Waving]

I'm new to the area and need expert advise on lawn maintenance. Can someone give me advise on fertilizing the lawn and weed control? Thanks.

[Jfunk]

If you are looking to maintain St Augustine Grass I would follow this link:

Lawn Care - St. Augustine

[Prichard]

For St. Augustine grass you need some basics:

First, you need to have a sprinkler system through out your yard. If you don't have this, then you might as well just get used to mowing the weeds.

You will need a combination of liquid and dry fertilizers, depending on what time of the year you are fertilizing.

You will need chemicals that kill chinch bugs, sod web worms, and other nasty bugs that can kill your lawn in just weeks.

You will need to keep a supply of "Molestop" on hand, and spray it about twice a year.

You will need a fungicide for the wet months.

You will need to keep your blade very sharp on your lawnmower (or your lawn can get diseased more easily)

During the dry months you can ignore the "IT JUST TAKES TWO" commercials that try to convince you that 10 minutes of water twice a week is all the water your lawn needs. To be honest with you, if I ever get fined for pumping my own water out of my ground, I'll probably take it all the way to the Supreme Court. And, if I lose, I'll pay the fine and keep on watering. It's cheaper than paying $6000 to replace my entire lawn and $2000 to re-do my sprinkler system after the lawn people totally destroy it.

As much as I don't really care for Massy Services termite bonds, they do provide really good lawn service (not mowing, just chemicals). I doubt that I would spend much less on fertilizer and chemicals doing it myself; and I've already proven several times that I'm fairly good at killing off a St. Augustine lawn.

[Petealan]

By the time you buy all the materials and equipment neccessary to weed and feed your own lawn, then spend your weekends doing it, you'd be better off just hiring a lawn care company. If they mess it up they will fix it for free. Many good ones out there. Apex, Massey, Middleton, etc.

[Brasstec]

We use Season's and have been happy with them. They charge $65.00 a month for our lawn which is about 1/2 acre...but we do have a large deck/swimming area. So they really only have the front yard, a large side yard, a small side yard and a narrow back yard area to do. They do only the grass - we fertilize the plantings and beds. We had the same experience as Pritchard....we were spending more on chemicals, etc. to treat our lawn and it still wasn't doing well. After spending $200.00 in about 6 weeks and the grass was still dying, we decided to let the pros handle it.