In Central Florida, you pay the same amount monthly throughout the year…But, they come every week in the summer or at least 3 out of 4 weeks and then in the non-growing season they come once every three weeks…Sometimes even less. Then in April/May it’s back to three times a month, etc.

Why do you pay the same amount every month? Why not stop and start as needed? Because that’s not the way these lawn services work and they all do it the same way. Of course, they base their monthly fee on how much lawn they have to mow. Most do nothing but mow, edge and blow the grass off the sidewalks. No shrub trimming.

I pay $70 a month and it’s well worth it. You do not want to be mowing a lawn here in the summer. The only negative is that many times, they transport grass fungus and crab grass seeds from one property to another on their mowers. We have St. Augustine grass which might look like crab grass to a Northerner. It is horrible stuff, but it can take the heat. When it dies, you get real crab grass or what we call "carpet grass" because it feels like walking on a carpet but it’s bad news. You have to rip it out, kill off all the seeds with Roundup and then resod. A pallet of sod today is around $150 in Central Florida. It is like 140 pieces of 1′ x 2-1/2′ and takes a few hours to put down. Then comes the worst part..watering it for two weeks! You can pay around $100 for someone to put it down.

St Augustine is one of the most water needy types of grass. It is a huge problem in Florida. It also requires lots of fertilizer and insecticides. We get chinch bugs, grubs, all sorts of fungus, etc. Drought also kills off the grass and the crab grass moves in. I absolutely hate St Augustine grass.
I love to go back to NJ and see that beautiful green soft grass.

The State wants us to use Bahia grass, but it looks strange. Charlie Crist, our Govenor, is pushing for synthetic green carpeting on all of our properties. It will save a ton of water and stop further polution of our underground aquifier. Charlie is such a smart guy. He’s also very, very big on pitch and putt courses so this would be perfect for him.