Weed Control · Florida
Do You Need a License to Spray Your Own Lawn? in Florida
A pesticide applicator license turns on who holds the sprayer, not what is in it. What EPA restricts, and which state agency decides the rest.
Regional Hub
Florida Lawn Care
Lawn care built for Florida: St. Augustine maintenance, regional weed and disease control, and a season-by-season calendar for USDA zones 8a–11a.
Dominant Grass
St. Augustine
USDA Zones
8a–11a
Soil
Sandy state-wide, but the series is the point: Myakka fine sand is the Florida state soil and a Spodosol, one of the flatwoods family (with Leon, Immokalee, Pomona and Smyrna) defined by an accumulation of organic matter, aluminium and iron in the subsoil. High organic muck near Lake Okeechobee, and shallow limestone and coral rock in Miami-Dade where the soil is measured in inches rather than feet.
Humidity
Very high
Weed Control in Florida
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Weed Control · Florida
Dollarweed: The Weed That Tells You About Your Water in Florida
UF calls dollarweed a reliable indicator of wet environments. Clemson's first control step is not a herbicide — it is checking how often you irrigate.
Weed Control · Florida
Dallisgrass vs Crabgrass: One Comes Back Every Year in Florida
Dallisgrass and crabgrass look alike and need opposite strategies: crabgrass dies at frost, dallisgrass comes back from the same crown for years.
Weed Control · Florida
How to Get Rid of Crabgrass: Timing Beats Chemicals in Florida
Crabgrass is a timing problem — but one pre-emergent pass is not a whole season. UF/IFAS: season-long control takes a second application 6–9 weeks later.
Weed Control · Florida
How to Get Rid of Nutsedge: One Pull Does Nothing in Florida
Nutsedge is a sedge, so no broadleaf or crabgrass product touches it. Halosulfuron and sulfentrazone are the two to look for — before the fifth-leaf stage.
Weed Control · Florida
Kill Dandelions Without Killing Grass — For Good in Florida
Killing dandelions without killing grass comes down to the taproot: the selective herbicides that reach it, and the month they actually work.
Weed Control · Florida
Spring Weed Control: Soil Temp, Not the Calendar in Florida
Spring weed control is decided by soil temperature, not the calendar — a pre-emergent applied two weeks late does nothing at all. The trigger, and the plan.
Lawn Diseases in Florida
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Lawn Diseases · Florida
Gray Leaf Spot: One Name, Three Different Diseases in Florida
NC State: perennial ryegrass loses turf in a few days, St. Augustine is the most resistant host. Same pathogen — so your grass decides how worried to be.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Mole Crickets: Treat in June, Not When You See Them in Florida
Mole crickets in a lawn are noticed in spring and autumn — the two worst times to treat. The window is small nymphs in June, and a soap flush confirms them.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Best Grub Killer: Two Actives, and One Aisle Full of Wrong Ones in Florida
MSU names six actives that should not be used for grub control at all — and some bags sold as grub killers contain exactly those. Two molecules do the work.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Lawn Disease After Flooding: What Follows the Water in Florida
Flooding moves the pathogen, stresses the plant and leaves the leaf wet. The hour thresholds that trigger Pythium and brown patch, and why nitrogen cuts both ways.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Dollar Spot Treatment: The Disease Nitrogen Fixes in Florida
Dollar spot is the one lawn disease caused by too little nitrogen, not too much — the exception to every other fungus guide here. The hourglass lesion confirms it.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Armyworms and Sod Webworms: Which Ate Your Lawn? in Florida
Green to brown in two days means armyworms; closely cropped patches mean sod webworms. Both are caterpillars — which rules out most grub products.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Chinch Bugs: How to Confirm Them and What Kills Them in Florida
Chinch bugs: two species, two grass families, and a float test that confirms them in five minutes. Plus the documented resistance nobody prints on the bottle.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Fire Ants in Lawns: Kill the Colony, Not the Mound in Florida
Treating fire ants in lawns by drenching the mound kills workers and moves the colony. Bait reaches the queen — that difference is why most attempts fail.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Lawn Grubs: How and When to Kill Them in Florida
Ohio State treats above 10 grubs per square foot, Illinois at about 12. Below that, count and do nothing — curative products only work August to October.
Lawn Diseases · Florida
Brown Patch Treatment: Fungicide Alone Won't Fix It in Florida
Brown patch treatment needs two things: the right fungicide, and the summer nitrogen habit that caused it. Fungicide alone buys you a repeat next July.
Grass Types in Florida
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Grass Types · Florida
Centipede Grass Lawn Care: Dark Green Is a Symptom in Florida
UGA lists dark green foliage as a symptom of centipedegrass decline. The colour most people are aiming for is the first sign this grass is failing.
Grass Types · Florida
Perennial Ryegrass: The Fastest Grass, and Its Price in Florida
Penn State: it germinates in 5 to 7 days and is very competitive with other turfgrasses. Both halves decide what care this lawn costs you.
Grass Types · Florida
Zoysia Grass Care: The Grass Nobody Defaults To in Florida
Zoysia is a secondary grass in 25 states and the dominant one in none. You choose it deliberately — and three of its costs are never on the sod invoice.
Grass Types · Florida
Growing Grass in Shade: The Two-Hour Minimum in Florida
Growing grass in shade has a hard floor: fine fescue is the most shade-tolerant lawn grass and still needs two hours of direct sun. Below that, no seed works.
Grass Types · Florida
Bermuda Grass Care: Mow It Lower Than You Think in Florida
Bermuda grass care starts with mowing lower than feels right — 1 to 2 inches. Plus when to scalp, how much nitrogen it takes, and the schedule that works.
Grass Types · Florida
St. Augustine Care: Mow High, Watch for Chinch Bugs in Florida
St. Augustine grass care: mow high, watch for chinch bugs, and know it cannot be seeded — only sod, plugs or sprigs. Plus the herbicides that damage it.
Grass Types · Florida
St. Augustine vs Zoysia: Shade or Traffic Decides in Florida
St. Augustine vs zoysia comes down to two questions: how much shade, and how much foot traffic. One tolerates each — and they are not the same grass.
Fertilizer in Florida
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Fertilizer · Florida
Phosphorus Fertilizer Laws: What You Can Legally Buy in Florida
Fifteen states restrict phosphorus lawn fertilizer by statute. Which bag is legal where you live, and why a soil test is the only thing that unlocks the other one.
Fertilizer · Florida
Winterizer Fertilizer: Right Idea, Wrong Bag in Florida
Purdue backs late-fall nitrogen and faults the bags: rates run too low, the potassium needs a soil test to justify — and warm-season lawns should skip it entirely.
Fertilizer · Florida
Lawn Soil pH: When to Lime, When to Add Sulfur in Florida
Lawn soil pH decides whether lime or sulfur is the fix — and the right answer inverts between Georgia and Arizona. What the soil test number means.
Fertilizer · Florida
When to Weed and Feed: Two Bags Often Beat One in Florida
Weed and feed does two jobs on two different calendars, so one bag rarely times both right. The month it works, and the lawns the label forbids.
Fertilizer · Florida
When to Fertilize: Autumn Matters More Than Spring in Florida
When to fertilize a lawn: autumn matters more than spring for cool-season grass, the reverse for warm-season — plus the state laws that close the window.
Fertilizer · Florida
Why Is My Lawn Yellow? 9 Causes, Not Just Nitrogen in Florida
Your lawn is yellow and nitrogen is only one of nine causes — feeding the wrong one wastes a season. Diagnose by pattern, blade and timing first.
Lawn Care Guides in Florida
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Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Lawn Watering Restrictions: Keeping Grass Alive in Florida
Your city assigns the days and bans the hours. How to hit a weekly inch in two legal windows, and why cycle-and-soak is the trick.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Lawn Recovery After Flooding: The Clock Starts Underwater in Florida
How long turf survives underwater, why the damage shows up days later, the 1-inch silt rule, and the survival percentage at which replanting beats rescuing.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Lawn Ruts After Storm Cleanup: What Repairs, What Doesn't in Florida
Shallow ruts take a ¼-inch topdressing; deep subsoil compaction from heavy equipment on saturated ground is, in Penn State's words, practically permanent.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Waterlogged Lawn: Test It Before You Fix It in Florida
Water standing after every rain has four possible causes and they need different fixes. A 15-minute hole test tells you which one you have before you spend money.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
When to Stop Mowing the Lawn: Watch 50°F, Not the Calendar in Florida
Cool-season grass stops growing when daytime highs stay below 50°F — that's the last-mow trigger. Too tall into winter invites disease; scalping is worse.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Winter Lawn Care: The Damage Happens in February in Florida
Penn State: crown hydration is the most common and destructive winter injury, and it happens in late winter after thawing and freezing — not in the deep cold.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Summer Lawn Care: What Helps and What Hurts in Florida
Summer lawn care inverts by grass type: feeding a warm-season lawn is routine; feeding a cool-season lawn is the classic mistake.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Fall Lawn Care: What to Do, and in What Order in Florida
Fall lawn care is the one season when doing more genuinely pays — for cool-season grass. On a warm-season lawn, autumn is mostly about stopping.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
How to Aerate a Lawn: Spike Tools Make It Worse in Florida
How to aerate a lawn, and when not to: spike tools compact the soil they punch through, core aeration pulls plugs out, and most lawns need it rarely.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
How to Fix Bare Spots in a Lawn — Or Leave Them in Florida
A bare spot smaller than your fist closes on its own. The bigger ones are a symptom — and the shape of the spot tells you which cause to fix first.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Lawn Mowing Height: Your Deck Setting Is Lying in Florida
Your deck setting is not your lawn mowing height — measure it once and most people find they cut lower than they think. The real number by species.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Should You Bag Grass Clippings? It Costs Nitrogen in Florida
Bagging grass clippings throws away up to a quarter of your lawn's nitrogen — and clippings do not cause thatch. The three times bagging is still right.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
Spring Lawn Care: Do Less, and Do It Later in Florida
Most spring lawn damage is done in March by people being helpful. Spring lawn care runs on soil temperature, not the calendar — and the order matters.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
When to Overseed Your Lawn — and When Not to Bother in Florida
When to overseed: late summer beats spring for cool-season lawns, most warm-season lawns should not be overseeded at all — and pre-emergent blocks your seed.
Lawn Care Guides · Florida
How Often to Water Your Lawn: Twice Beats Daily in Florida
How often to water a lawn: twice a week beats every morning, and one inch a week beats guessing. Measure your own sprinkler — the timer is not telling you.
Garden Guides in Florida
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Garden Guides · Florida
Compost for a Vegetable Garden: How Much Is Too Much in Florida
Utah State mixes an inch in before planting. Colorado State maintains at a quarter inch a year. The popular figure is neither, and it accumulates.
Garden Guides · Florida
Garden Soil pH: The Vinegar Test Comes First in Florida
Whether you can change your soil pH at all is decided by free lime — and a spoonful of vinegar answers it in ten seconds, before any amendment.
Garden Guides · Florida
Raised Bed Soil Mix: Two Extensions, Two Recipes in Florida
Clemson says compost at 10–20% of the bed. Utah State says a third, or 30–50% as an amendment. Both are extension advice, and the gap is real.
Garden Guides · Florida
When to Plant Garlic: Roots Before Winter, No Shoots in Florida
Garlic is the one crop timed off your FIRST frost, not your last. The window is wide enough to root and narrow enough not to sprout.
Garden Guides · Florida
When to Plant Tomatoes: Frost Date Is Half the Answer in Florida
Every tomato planting date is an offset from your last frost — but the soil has to reach 60°F too, and those two do not arrive together.
Garden Guides · Florida
When to Start Seeds Indoors: Four to Twelve Weeks in Florida
The indoor window is four to twelve weeks depending on the crop — and the cost of starting early is a leggy seedling, not an earlier harvest.
Product Reviews in Florida
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Product Reviews · Florida
Best Grass Seed for Shade: Read the Back of the Bag in Florida
Iowa State's rule makes shade-seed shopping simple: at least 50%, preferably 75% fine fescue in the mix. Under 4 hours of sun, no bag changes the answer.
Product Reviews · Florida
Best Weed Killer for Lawns: Match It to the Weed in Florida
There is no best weed killer for lawns, only the right one for your weed: the seven chemistries that matter, what each kills, and the one that kills grass too.
Product Reviews · Florida
Organic Weed Killer for Lawns: The One That Works in Florida
The organic weed killer that works on lawns is iron — it burns broadleaf weeds and moss in hours without harming grass. What it won't do: kill the roots.
Product Reviews · Florida
Best Weed Killer for Bermuda Grass: What Each Misses in Florida
The best weed killer for Bermuda grass depends on the weed — and Bermuda tolerates chemistries that would scorch St. Augustine. What each option misses.
Florida Lawn Calendar
What your St. Augustine lawn needs, season by season.
Spring
- Apply pre-emergent herbicide by early March
- First fertilization after full green-up (typically April)
- Raise mower to 3.5–4 inches for St. Augustine
- Calibrate irrigation before the dry season peaks
Summer
- Scout weekly for chinch bugs in hot, dry spots near pavement
- Watch for gray leaf spot during the wet season
- Respect local summer fertilizer blackout periods (June 1 – Sept 30 in many counties)
- Mow high and never remove more than 1/3 of the blade
Fall
- Apply fall pre-emergent by early October
- Final fertilization with potassium emphasis (where permitted)
- Treat large patch preventively as soil temps drop below 70°F
- Reduce irrigation frequency as growth slows
Winter
- Spot-treat winter broadleaf weeds
- Avoid nitrogen on semi-dormant turf
- Service mower and sharpen blades
- Plan next season's pre-emergent timing
Official Florida resources
Three things every guide here eventually sends you to do — and all three answers are specific to Florida rather than national: test your soil, read your own land-grant programme, and check whether the state has added anything to a product's federal label.
Soil testing
The land-grant lab that tests soil for residents here:
UF/IFAS Extension Soil Testing Laboratory (ESTL)Accepts samples only from within Florida, so an out-of-state lab is not an option here.
Why the number matters more than the bag: soil pH in Florida.
Turfgrass research
Every guide here defers to your own land-grant programme somewhere. This is it:
UF/IFAS Turfgrass ScienceUniversity of Florida IFAS
Publishes a separate homeowner guide per species — bahiagrass, bermudagrass, centipedegrass, St. Augustinegrass, zoysiagrass — which is the right shape for a state where the five are genuinely different lawns. The part worth knowing about is the diagnostic bench behind it: a Rapid Turfgrass Diagnostic Service, the Extension Soil Testing Lab, and a Nematode Assay Lab. That last one matters more here than anywhere else, because sting and lance nematodes on sand are a Florida problem a soil test will not find. UF/IFAS also publishes an irrigation calibration guide, and the Florida-Friendly Landscaping programme sits alongside it.
Where their advice and a national rule of thumb disagree, follow theirs — they trialled it in 8a–11a.
Pesticide regulation
Pesticide authority sits with the state department of agriculture:
Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer ServicesDivision of Agricultural Environmental Services
Restrictions we found printed on labels: Florida product restrictions.
Municipal Watering Restrictions & Microclimates
Hyper-local drought regulations and watering schedules for major metropolitan areas in Florida.
Lawn Health Newsletter
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Pre-emergent windows, disease alerts and fertilization schedules for your region — one short email, right when your lawn needs it.
Free forever. Unsubscribe anytime. US lawns only (for now). This season's companion: the printable fall checklist.