I recently moved to Central Florida and my lawn is a disaster. Crabgrass and weeds. Been told that it may be my best option to use Extended Rounded-up and make sure I don't plant anything for four months. I've got about 10,000 sf to deal with. Most lawns here are St. Augustine, but I've heard nightmares about the upkeep and cinch bugs. Plus I'd like to get out of the expense of having it sodded, although I realize I may have no choice. (Not sure how much it would cost to sod, but sounds expensive.) A few folks have Zoysia or Bahia-grass. Any suggestions on what to do would be greatly appreciated.

I've had st augustine lawn and it was pretty easy to care for when done right. I would just simply nurse existing st augustine back to health.

1) Find out when you should put down pre-emergence weed control (prevent weed seeds from germinating) for the fall/winter. Repeat during February.

2) Mow at 3 inches.

3) Water deeply and infrequently. At least one inch of water (600 gallons per 1000 sqft of lawn). You don't have to water the entire lawn. I usually go 10-14 days between watering during dry spell.

4) Don't fertilize during summer as it will increase demand for water.

5) If your st augustine is Raleigh cultivar or old common type, you may want to plug in very drought hardy 'Floratam' cultivar.

You should now be watering no more than once every 7 days. As the evenings cool off, you can back off gradually to once per month watering for the winter. Watch the St Aug while you are watering to determine whether it needs to be more frequent than once every 7 days. Ideally you want to develop deep roots that can capture water deeper down.

Weeds are usually only a problem when people water daily and/or mow too low. I am running a St Augustine experiment at my home in George West, Texas. GW is on the edge of the Texas desert. We are usually influenced by gulf winds, but the temps are almost always in the 98-101 range in the heat of summmer. Evening temps are just now falling back to the low 80s. Soil is a sandy/loamy/clay in that order. So my soil is only slightly richer than yours and my climate is probably considerably less humid. My experiment is to see what happens when I don't mow the grass. After almost a year I have places where the grass is about 30 inches long and places where it is only 6 inches high. The short grass is all in the full sun and the tall grass is all in the deep shade. The tall grass has gotten 10 inches of well timed rain and about 1 inch of irrigation. The short grass gets the rain and weekly irrigation as it withers in the heat once a week. Typically I water about 1/4 inch per week when I water but I'm moving to 1/2 inch.

The weeds I have are a pasture grass called King Ranch bluestem that is taking over Texas. I have not done anything to control it other than not water it. It only gets water where it lives at the fringe of the St Aug. My hope is the St Aug will become dense enough that it pushes the KRBS out. So far that battle seems to be a draw.