Floratam is the St. Augustine sod we lay on a normal North Port home lawn. The product page is Floratam St. Augustine sod. It is the cultivar named on the sod service because it handles partial shade and holds up in this humidity. Bahia is the less expensive grass for a large open area. Zoysia is denser and slower once it is established. Floratam is the residential lawn between those two.
People say St. Augustine when they mean the lawn, and Floratam when they mean the grass on the truck. On this site those are not two products. Floratam is the St. Augustine we name. We do not list a second St. Augustine cultivar beside it. If a different one belongs on a job, it gets named when the crew says so, not on a glossary page.
What it looks like here
A Floratam lawn in partial shade, cut high, reads as a solid green carpet with a coarse blade. Partial shade means morning sun on a wall, or trees at the edge and open sky in the middle. It does not mean the ground under a mature oak that is dark at noon. In that dark the lawn thins, weeds that tolerate shade move in, and a new roll follows the old one. The grass did not fail the town. It failed the light.
On sand it dries fast. North Port, Port Charlotte, and Venice lots drain quickly, so a missed stretch in the first weeks can kill a new lawn in days. After it is established, the same sand shows up as patchy turf when irrigation is skipped in the dry months. The blade is not the clock. The water is.
What we do with it
We pull out the old mat, grade water away from the house, add topsoil only where the sand will not hold moisture, and lay Floratam tight with staggered seams. Installed sod is $0.85–$1.75 per square foot. Floratam sits above Bahia in that band. That is a range, not a bid, and it is not a pallet price. Kids and pets stay off the first week. Regular foot traffic waits about two weeks. We walk through the first two to three weeks of water and we do not stay to run the clock.
Once it is a lawn, the cut is 3.5 to 4 inches. Shorter than that is scalping. We do not spray chinch bugs or fungus. Thin sunny patches get flagged on a mowing visit. Dead turf gets replaced. A dark corner gets a bed, not another roll of this grass. The install, the band, and the failures are on Floratam St. Augustine sod.