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

Cat Grass

Grass seems to want to grow just about anywhere it can find that has even the slightest bit of dirt. Here we were in Galveston checking out Jean Lafitte's old castle grounds.  You can see the wall footing from part of the structure here with grass growing in and out of the footprint.  Even in the shadow, although patchy, it's taking root.

Since we got cats my wife has decided they need a bit of greenery in their lives.  So we ordered some seeds and got one of the pots that isn't currently growing anything and planted some cat grass.  That's fancy talk for wheat, oats, and barley. If I let it grow, we could even harvest grain from it but I don't think that's the idea here.  Cats are high end carnivores and don't take to salad eating much but a little green is apparently also good for their gut health.

I'm going to grow it outside for the most part and since our house faces West, the East side is in the back and gets some good morning sun on our patio.  I don't want it just out in the yard so the pot will sit there.  With proper watering and patience we should have some greenery for the cats in a couple weeks.  Again if I let it grow more we would have grain in a few months.  Might try that with a little of it just to see how it goes.  There's plenty of seed  in the bag.

Also probably going to see about getting better grass for the yard.  The stuff they have in there now is patchy and not very attractive.  It's sod though so maybe it will eventually grow in better.  At the previous house we had St. Augustine grass.  That's what I grew up having at my grandparents houses.  the both of them swore by it.  So, we'll see.