Landscaping & Site Work

I'm taking over maintenance on a Floratam St. Augustine lawn in Jacksonville. What height should I be cutting it at, and how much can I take off in one pass?

Customer asks how long each irrigation zone should run. I don't know the heads' output. How do I figure out run times the right way?

How do I tell a lawn actually needs water versus just running the system on a schedule?

I've got a property with a dozen queen palms and sabals in the lawn. What fertilizer should go on the palms, and does it matter what the lawn guy is putting on the turf?

How do I confirm chinch bugs are what's killing a St. Augustine lawn and not something else?

Planting a 45-gallon live oak in a residential yard. Walk me through the hole and how deep it goes.

How deep should I put pine bark mulch in the beds, and does it matter if I pile it around the shrub and tree trunks?

Backyard holds water for two days after a storm. I want to run a French drain to the swale at the property line 60 feet away. How do I build it so it doesn't clog or fail?

Give me the prep and laying sequence for a 4,000 sq ft Floratam sod job replacing a dead lawn.

Just laid St. Augustine sod in June. What's the watering schedule for the first month, and when do I mow and fertilize it?

Can I put rotors and spray heads on the same irrigation zone if the pipe can handle the flow?

Laying out spray heads on a 30 by 60 foot lawn strip. How far apart do they go, and what nozzles?

It's late October in north Florida and a St. Augustine lawn is getting rings of yellow-then-brown grass, a couple feet across, in the low, shaded areas. What is it and what do I do?

Customer's front yard is under big oaks and gets maybe 4 hours of filtered sun. They want Floratam. What do you tell them?

How much nitrogen should a St. Augustine lawn in the Jacksonville area get per year, and how should it be split up?

Building a 12 by 16 paver patio off the back door in sandy soil. What's under the pavers and how much slope?

Building a 3-foot segmental block retaining wall, 40 feet long, holding a sloped backyard. What are the parts that matter so it doesn't lean in five years?

Customer wants all the crape myrtles cut back to 5-foot stubs in February like the neighbors do. What do you tell them and what pruning do you actually do?

When during the day should irrigation run, and why does it matter?

I've got 1,200 square feet of beds to mulch at 3 inches. How many cubic yards do I order, and how many yards of screened topsoil to raise a 20 by 30 foot area 4 inches?

I'm trenching for irrigation mainline and a few landscape lighting runs on a residential lot in Clay County next week. What are the rules on calling in locates?

Locates are in and there's a yellow gas line painted right where my drain trench has to cross. How close can the trencher get, and what do I do at the crossing?

Programming a controller for a house in Clay County with an odd-numbered address. What days and times am I allowed to set it for?

Installing a new automatic irrigation system. Is a rain sensor actually required by law in Florida or just a good idea?

I run a mow-and-blow crew and want to start offering fertilizer applications on residential lawns. Do I need any license for that in Florida?

Final grading around a new house before sod. What does the code require for slope away from the foundation?

Customer wants a block retaining wall along the side yard. At what point do I need a permit and an engineer?

We're clearing and grading a 1.5 acre lot for a new landscape and pond. Anything beyond the local land-clearing permit I need to think about for stormwater?

Mid-July, Jacksonville. Sod supplier dropped 10 pallets of Floratam on Friday afternoon; crew laid it Monday and Tuesday, ran the irrigation once Tuesday evening after finishing, then set the controller for the address's two allowed days. By Friday it's yellow and the edges are curling. What went wrong?

Irrigation install in a subdivision. The foreman called 811 at 7 a.m. Tuesday, got a ticket number, and had the trencher cutting the mainline route along the front of the lot by 10 a.m. the same day because 'the ticket's in.' What's the problem?

Reviewing a plan for an irrigation system on a corner lot: 6 zones, 1-inch PVC mainline off a 3/4-inch meter, zone 4 has four rotors plus six 15-foot sprays on 20-minute run time, controller scheduled every day at 1 p.m. because the owner wants to see it running, no sensor, hose bib connection for the backflow. What's wrong with this plan?

Crew planted a 30-gallon magnolia: dug the hole 3 feet deep and just wider than the pot, dropped it in, backfilled with two bags of potting mix and topsoil, mounded 6 inches of mulch up the trunk, and staked it tight with wire run through garden hose. Customer's happy. What's about to go wrong?

Homeowner's yard sloped toward the house, so the landscaper hauled in 12 yards of fill, built up the bed against the back wall about 8 inches so it's level with the rest, sodded it, and set a spray zone to hit the beds. Stucco house on slab. What did they miss?

Property has a row of queen palms in a lawn that gets 16-4-8 every six weeks March through October. The palms' older fronds are yellow-orange with dead tips and some crowns look narrow. Crew has been cutting off the yellow fronds every visit to keep it tidy. What's happening and what should change?

Sub built a 300 sq ft paver walk and patio: scraped the sod, spread 2 inches of play sand, screeded it, laid the pavers, swept in the same sand, no edging because the pavers 'lock together.' Looks great today. What's the failure?

Job in progress: a 5-foot tall segmental block wall holding back a slope with the customer's driveway 4 feet behind the top. The crew set the first course on scraped grade, is backfilling with the native clay they dug out, no pipe, no stone, no grid, and plans to cap it tomorrow. What do you stop?

It's the first week of July, 95 degrees, no rain for two weeks. Customer wants the lawn 'greened up and the weeds gone,' so the tech plans to spread a 29-0-4 weed-and-feed with atrazine at a rate that works out to 1.5 lb N per 1,000 across the whole St. Augustine lawn, then not water it in because of restrictions. What's wrong?

November, north Florida. A St. Augustine lawn has circular yellow-brown patches 3 to 6 feet across in the lower half of the yard. The maintenance tech's fix: bump irrigation to daily to 'stress it less,' apply a 20-0-0 to push new growth, and mow the whole yard at 2.5 inches so the patches blend in. What's about to happen?

Crew ran a French drain from a soggy side yard: 4-inch perforated pipe, holes up, laid in a level trench with pea gravel dumped straight on the clay, then ran it 40 feet into a 'dry well' they dug 2 feet deep in the same clay. Water table around here sits about 18 inches down in the wet season. Why is the yard still wet?

August service call: St. Augustine lawn has expanding brown areas along the driveway and sidewalk on the sunny south side; the rest of the lawn looks fine. Tech figures the heat's cooking it, bumps those zones from 30 to 60 minutes, and says check back in two weeks. What did he miss?