# Budget lawn - South Florida



## wilsonline (Dec 18, 2021)

Ok, so I rent and the lawn sections were in extreme bad condition. I'm in Fort Lauderdale, FL, zone 10 b I guess, maybe 11 a.
The lawn was a mix of weeds, bare dirt, and a bit of grass (or grassy weeds). I've always liked grasses and nice lawns, but I was not focussing or putting much effort into this. So one harsh winter came and also a lot of caterpillars. By that time, I wasn't aware that they were eating the grass lol. So After that period, the lawn was mostly bare dirt. At that point, I bought some fertilizer, some weed & feed haha, got some grass seeds, and most importantly, started studying the subject (youtube, articles, etc).











































Spring came and I seeded what I think was sun & shade mix from Scotts. I pretty much just spread that on top of the dirt and did nothing else. Did that on the swale where it was heavily shaded, mostly bare dirt covered with leaves and some tough weeds (woody stems). Nothing came lol. More research and I realized I had to seed a warm-season grass (I know you're laughting here :lol: ) and would need irrigation. House had irrigation, but it was all closed, not one head worked and the pipe was busted in multiple sections, and no power to the controller, solenoid valves were broken, no valve box but all exposed to the sun probably for over 20 years. 
By that time, I tried to seed zoysia, raked the dirt, and water twice a day by hand.
I have 4 sections of lawn. Front yard, that section has a fine sand/silt ( maybe what's called marl). There is one huge massive tree there, but still get some sun, and that soil dries pretty fast. The swale is almost 100% shaded, the soil was sand and below that was a mix of dark dirt very compacted. Soil holds most for more time. The backyard is a mix of the 2, one side is that fine silt, and the other has a darker soil (that actually looks good), still with lots of sand. And last, the alley is a small section around 150 sqft of dry silt/marl/sand. 
At some point, I finally realized I was not able to grow anything not even weeds under that shade. Also, the city requested to take a tree down and some branches of other trees. The 60ft tall tree was inclined to the neighbor. The landlord did nothing. So at this point, I got an electric mower, bc it was a pain to get the gas-powered mower to start. Also fixed some sprinkler heads. Trimmed the trees several times, dropped that pine. Sprayed round-up in the yard to give the zoysia seeds a better chance, and manually tilled the dirt. Yes, that was horrible :nod: . I had to manually open the sprinkler valve to water the lawn. :lol: 
Seeded zoysia again. And fail again. But now, with more sunlight, with some irrigation, yes some of the zoysia survived and I had more weeds. So I had the typical ugly lawn. That except on the swale, that section was still 50% dirt, probably because of the shade. And the neighbor also has massive trees that I can't touch. 
So, end of 2020 and city requested 100% coverage on the swale. At this point, I had a rough idea of what I had to do. The landlord said she was going to buy the sod. So I offered her a deal, she buys zeon zoysia and I would install a new sprinkler system and lay the sod. The city gave us like 40 days to get it done. So, With my low-budget situation, all was done manually and with whatever I could buy second-hand. The sprinkler was done mostly with orbit stuff, their manifold controller, anti-siphon valve, master valve, 6 stations but only 2 got done (front yard and swale). A few nights after work digging, cutting tons of tree roots, spraying glyphosate multiple times. Had to grade the whole thing again after that mess.
Product finished ready for the sod and landlord refused to spend a dime again. 



























The trash is from neighbors :lol:









The city inspector asked me to call a stump grinder for the stump/roots of the palm trees I took down. Also at their request. I did all by hand, hope I don't have to do that ever again. :nod: 
















This area is still bare dirt. But I'm dumping all the leaves here to mix some organic matter into the sand.

So I seeded rye, it was November already. I wasn't confident about the zoysia seed. Actually, I seeded both together. I guess both sprouted but only the rye made it through. Did the swale first as the city inspector said he only cared about that. But then he changed his mind and requested both at the same final date. 
I noticed the new grass wasn't doing much and the color was kind of pale/ yellowish. So I fertilized the soil. yeah, I didn't add any fert before that. And checked the soil pH. I"m not sure if I did the test correctly. I had a pH tester and did it based on a few YT videos. Basically, got samples, dried, mixed with RODI water (a bunch of stuff from my fish tank lol), and tested. pH was at 8.4 to 8.5 based on my DIY test.
So I applied 10lb/1000sqft of elemental sulfur. The powder was what I found locally, terrible to spread, but cheaper.
If that did any effect or not, IDK. But grass took off and soon I had a nice lawn. So all the fuzz I saw online about ryegrass is true, this grass is amazing. It's cheap, fast, insanely beautiful. 
I had some EDTA iron and Plantex CSM-B at home and started using that too. I would spray biweekly: 5 g of that iron, 5 g of Plantex CSM, 50 g of urea, 50 g of potash. I'm mowing almost every day at the minimum height (around 1-3/8 inches) on my mower. 










































I did the swale first. That gave me time to apply glyphosate multiple times to the front yard. 

























I'm writing this while I wait for a delivery of topsoil. It's about time to kill the rye. I wish I could keep this, but following the advice I was given, I'm going to kill it with glyphosate and topdress the lawn with topsoil. I just hope the topsoil will give the seeds a better chance. 6 yards3 of topsoil and 1 yard3 of sand coming. Not sure how much that is lol. :lol:

































Lots of trimmings to get some sunlight to the swale. And it's still very shaded. If it wasn't for the shade, I would be seeding Bermuda grass. Trimming was a constant thing. In the last 10 months, I took that much down every month to get light in the yards.


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## wilsonline (Dec 18, 2021)

The dirt was delivered. Tons of crap in it. Can't use it like that. Ordered 6 yards of dirt and 1 of sand.
















Any tips on how to make a screener? :bd:


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## wilsonline (Dec 18, 2021)

I took some more surface tree roots. 
































I seeded the same compadre zoysia in this pot. This is the first time it worked. :lol: 
Lots os weeds, maybe crabgrass? 
I am not 100% sure if this is the best option. But it's much cheaper than sod and it's available. I would love to get some zeon zoysia or zorro, but it's crazy expensive and it's not even available here. I can only find Empire zoysia here. And I don't like that.


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## wilsonline (Dec 18, 2021)

So, I sprayed the rye with glyphosate, top dressed, and leveled the whole thing. Didn't come out 100%, but it's much better.






Rye is taking a long time to die, but if I remember right, glyphosate is slow.


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## wilsonline (Dec 18, 2021)

Update:
So, I killed the rye, and topdressed with topsoil. Seeded Compadre Zoysia (Scotts) on March 9th. Took about 2 weeks for the rye to die. 7 days for the zoysia to sprout, I'm sure it would take less if I started watering properly on the first day. About 50 days till it was like a lawn and I started mowing. Again, I'm pretty sure it could be done in less than 30 days if the soil was good and watered right, as I had in the vase. I went through a severe drought and lost some spots on the lawn. Got tons of weeds.





Topsoil after screen. It was way worse than I thought. Good thing I didn't follow what the store owner told me to do, to topdress with that and pick up the larger rocks lol. About 1/3 were rocks and sticks, big rocks!


Lawn after 2 months? I can't remember now. The color is terrible light green, awful. I miss the rye!
The dark spots next to the trees are ryegrass.



I missed some of the rye next to the trees-what a contrast in color.


Also took some samples of different grasses and put them on those vases. The Scotts lawn soil makes a huge difference in the final color. My lawn soil is terrible.


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## wilsonline (Dec 18, 2021)

Just an update and before that, a description of how the zoysia seeding was. Seed was put down on March 9th. 

Lawn prepped for zoysia seeds, topdressed with topsoil.


After some rain. And it looked bare for a while.


Hand-picking weeds.


Blowing the leaves. It did pull some seedlings. But I couldn't let it sit there or the baby grass would die in the shade.


Tree leaves are a constant thing on my lawn. and with that blowing them out or losing grass. * At this time, I was collecting leaves daily, this was in the winter (not now), ryegrass. Just to illustrate the problem.


No rain, but still had issues with washout. The city was flushing the pipes and I almost didn't realize it. They would open the hydrant around 10 pm and flood half the road and the sidewalk. Washed seeds and soil. :nod:


Someone dropped a bottle full of bleach. it leaked and I had another dead spot.


A plastic fence won't stop people from running over your lawn.


Before I even had a zoysia lawn, bugs were already eating the zoysia on the vase. Thanks to Sam Einsohn, I knew what it was, tropical sod webworm (tsww). A major issue for Zoysia japonica in South Florida. They're everywhere. Acelepryn seems to be working, so no major infestation on my current turf.
Did you notice how straight the cuts are? I didn't mow this, it's a vase. Because of that, many people don't realize it's tsww and blame dull blades.


For over a month, I had very thin grass with lots of weeds. Not funny.


I had drought stress all over where I installed irrigation. Where I dug to lay the pipes. Because my soil is pretty much bare sand, with a very thin layer of topsoil, in those spots, the topsoil was mixed and no topsoil was left on the surface. Well, that's my guess. I did spot topdress with topsoil and it did help a lot, but I only had a few bags of Scott's lawn topsoil and it had so many rocks, trash, and wood chips, that I did repeat that. 
And I have had this bare spot since June (?). It died when the irrigation stopped watering. Rain on radar, but nothing here. So, I lost a couple of areas, but this never filled back in.


At this point, the grass was decent for the most part. With more N and Eddha iron, the color was not so terrible anymore. And I started to see it get thick.


But that didn't last. On July 4th, I decided to level the lawn. Covered it with sand, yes, this time just sand. Still some rocks, but manageable. 
The grass took a long time to recover from this.


I made the mistake of ordering the sand from the same place. I asked the guy if he could drop the sand close to the grass, but without going over the lawn. My boss was more pissed than me when I arrived home and saw this. He was close to me on the phone when I mentioned 3 times to the guy not to go over the grass. That was the only instruction. Can you drop it closer to the lawn, but not go over the grass? simple. I wonder if this was intentional. Anyway, another bare spot in my collection.


Another project, finish the inside of the shed. All DIY, tile, electric, drywall, paint, baseboard.. My point was to seal and not have bugs going on my 
stuff. Success, but I was not able to store all my lawn stuff there, because of the heat. It's just a shed, so no ac. Chemicals are still inside.


Didn't expand my grass collection. But I love this thin-bladed zoysia. Yes, I leveled the vases with Bermuda. :lol:


Playing with some manual mowers. First the 5 blade Earthwise my neighbors gave me. Then the Fiskars, the gm1000 (too heavy for my tiny lawn), new Scott's 7 blades, and finally found this MClane 10 blades manual. I love this little mower. Cuts down to 3/16~1/4''. Nice at 1/2''. Real hoc is probably a little higher than that due to the grass density, but it's enough for me.


Also tried PGR and it's amazing. Better color, less work, more free time. First 1/4, then 1/2 and more 1/2 rate. It was under regulation for about a month with that. And no noticeable turf stress.


I only stopped pgr, for now, to kill some weeds and level this again. 
First a mix of SpeedZone + Quinclorac. And another mix of Celsius + Certainty. Also low rate Prodiamine. Didn't kill everything, but I was left with what I was able to hand pick. I had problems with what I thought to be Carpetgrass, but was bull paspalum. And something like crabgrass. I still have some weeds popping here and there, but very few. Almost weed-free (not really lol).


I'm not sure how many hours of sun I have, but this Compadre is doing pretty good for now.


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## wilsonline (Dec 18, 2021)

Just yesterday, 09/19/22, I scalped the side lawn. I got a little excited with the new to me manual Mclane and tried the lowest setting. Thought it would be 1/2, but it was 3/16''.
I always hear people saying it's a workout to use a manual, it was always easy for me, but that was with the lower count blade reels. With this 10-blade Mclane, it's hard, pretty hard to mow this low and scalp, I finished (2 passes in each direction) all sweat. Now I understand. hehe


And I leveled after that. I had sand stored in the backyard.


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