St Augustine Grass Seed

You and every other person who has wanted a quick lush lawn of St Augustine grass has been told that you can't get it by planting seed.  Some even say that St Augustine grass doesn't make seeds. Some say the seeds St Augustine grass does make are not viable. The truth of the matter is that St Augustine grass does make seeds and plenty of them in the right conditions. Getting a nice lush yard of the stuff though is better handled through just installing turf.

These were hand harvested from some St Augustine plugs that decided to make some seeds.  These are from one stalk and it was a stalk I had previously mowed down and this was what remained of it.

I got about a square foot of turf from a reliable and healthy lawn and transplanted it in various places in my back yard. I split it up into 6 pieces and plugged them in.  My hope is that it will spread as St Augustine does and take over the yard. This may take a while since it seems to spread about 4-8 inches a year with the occasional long runner which can go over a foot.  It's these runners that I hope will start proliferating the yard and set up new areas of St Augustine.  After a while I also plan to pull plugs and spread manually.  Within 5 years I hope to have a full yard. We'll see about the front eventually.

For now I have planted these in some dirt inside to see if they will sprout.  I'm curious how viable the seeds really are.  There is definitely some promise here though as most of these are full plump seeds.

If you've ever had success with St Augustine seeds please let me know.  I'd love to see how it turned out.

Sent from my iPhone

Flower Cluster

This time we have a flower cluster. Typically cacao trees grow more than one flower from a single flower pad. To keep a flower pad in good condition you never pull fruit off of the tree. That will damage a pad and may never grow flowers from that location again if it is damaged too much.

This is still the first tree but if you look closely this is flowers 4,5,6, and 7. Still trying to get the second tree big enough that it will want to flower.

Both trees are currently in the same area and of course indoors. The heat this week is in the mid 100's so definitely not what these trees need to be happy and healthy.

The strawberry plants on the other hand are coming back like it's spring. I had nearly given up on them but kept watering anyway.  Now it looks like, even though they died back quite a bit all the way down to the dirt, they are all coming back with new growth. At first it was just one of the plants with a small green shoot of leaves but now the whole pot is nearly filled in at the ground level. I can only hope that this is going to mean they will overwinter well if I bring them inside.   They are in a pot after all.  The runners we propagated however did not fare so well and have not come back. Much of what we planted out front though is still good. Our basil plants are bushy and getting bigger after I trimmed back the flowers.

The fig tree in the back is also bouncing back nicely.  I had figured the heat would keep it down until September or October once it started cooling down but the heat seems to have kicked it into high gear and it's shooting leaves up all over.