North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[RW Spalinger <rwspal@earthlink.net>]

On Apr 30, 2004, at 9:27 AM, Lucky Pittman wrote:

> At 09:20 AM 4/30/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> > That's probably why I've never heard of St Augustine grass.
> Yep.  It's pretty well confined to the Gulf Coast region of the 
> southeastern US.  Makes a pretty decent lawn in that part of the 
> country - better than bermuda, but inferior to centipede grass, in my 
> opinion.

Indeed, I'm in zone 8, about 60 miles from the gulf coast in Texas. St 
Augustine grass grows well here, although to keep it green and 
lawn-like, takes a moderate amount of water. It browns out with lack of 
rain, and dies out in the winter. But it comes back every spring, and 
spreads some each year. Even in it's dead winter state, it maintains a 
thick cover.

One problem from my viewpoint is, that the wild flowers, that we have a 
lot of, have difficulty coming through in early spring. They come 
through the bermuda weed with no problem. We mow in late autumn, and 
not again until all the wild flowers have died out in late spring, 
early summer. Then we try to keep the meadow mowed until autumn again. 
Each year we have more wild flowers.

Randall Spalinger
zone 8, SE Texas