Two years ago I moved to Gainesville. I had made it a priority on my house shopping list to find a house without St. Augustine grass. I almost cried when I saw that almost every yard in Gainesville had St. Augustine grass. Why don't I like St. Augustine grass? Let me tell you.
Prior to moving to Gainesville, I lived in Pensacola Florida. The climate is similar to Gainesville with the exception of the winters being a little colder, but only by a few degrees. The grass of choice for Pensacola yards is centipede grass. My front yard had centipede, but my back yard had St. Augustine. Not knowing much about grass, I did not do much other than water and cut the grass. Shortly after moving in, I noticed a large area of the St. Augustine grass dying. Not knowing what to do, I called a lawn service company and $200 later the cinch bugs were killed. I vowed never to spend that kind of money on my lawn again, and decided to research how to maintain St. Augustine grass. My research lead me to find that most herbicide and pesticide products available on the market can not be used on St. Augustine grass. The product will inevitably kill the weed or pest, but it will also kill the grass. In the four years I lived in Pensacola, I struggled to keep the St. Augustine grass alive. Between the cinch bugs, sod web worms, weeds, and fungus, there was very little St. Augustine grass left.
My front yard; however, was different. The centipede grass required very little care. Not once did it get infested with bugs, or fungus, and I was able to spot spray any emerging weeds with Weed-B-Gone without damaging the grass. It always looked green and healthy.
Happy to be rid of my Pensacola back yard, I was ready to find a centipede sodded yard in Gainesville. Needless to say I did not find such a yard. Less then a month after moving into Gainesville my lawn started to look bad. It had a fungus. Knowing I could not let both my front and back yard turn into weeds, I broke down and hired a lawn service company to maintain pest and weed control and to fertilize the lawn. I just moved again into another house in Gainesville this summer. The St. Augustine was well kept by the previous owner. I did not start up lawn service immediately, and shortly after moving in the grass began to look bad. It had sod web worms. Again, I had to hire a lawn service. The lawn service man forgot to spray a section of the grass. A week later I realized that section was getting worse instead of better. By the time the service man could come back again to spray, the majority of the grass had died. It has been just a little over a week since the grass was sprayed and some of it is coming back, but now the area will be susceptible to weeds. St. Augustine grass is so frustrating!
All the problems I have had with St. Augustine grass has led me to ask why is it preferred over centipede grass in Gainesville. I called three local nurseries and asked if they carried both St. Augustine and centipede grasses. They all did, so both species are available to the public . I compared the price of a pallet of grass to see if that was a factor and found one nursery's price for centipede was cheaper than their price for St. Augustine; one nursery priced both grasses the same; and one nursery's price was higher for centipede than their price for St. Augustine. Not only were these nurseries inconsistent with which product they priced higher, they ranged in price from $125 to $250 a pallet. Price is clearly not a factor.
This leads me shade tolerance. If comparing St. Augustine with centipede for shade tolerance, St. Augustine will win. There are a lot of trees in Gainesville yards which require the most shade tolerant grass, but not all yards are created equal. Next time you drive through a Gainesville neighborhood, look at how many front yards are treeless or have just one or two small trees that do not give off much shade. Look at their grass. Is it St. Augustine or centipede? More than likely it is St. Augustine. My goal is to prescribe the right plant for the right area for my future clients. Unless my opinion about St. Augustine grass changes, I will be prescribing centipede grass to all homeowners with a sunny lot.
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ep072
