re: Can I get advice/tips for my lawn after the winter? ::Updated with pics:::

Those pics help. You’ve got a tremendous amount of lawn weeds, including annual bluegrass (Poa annua), ponyfoot (dichronda), lawn burweed, catch-all bedstraw, clovers, others. Looks to be some St Augustine under all those weeds and I think I see some common Bermudagrass. The last pic I wasn’t sure so I sent it to the weed specialist in the LSU AgCenter and he thinks the grass on the left is bahiagrass and he’s not sure about the plant on the right. Hard to ID some plant from photos without seed heads.

Where are you located - what parish? Your lawn not drain well? Ponyfoot is pretty characteristic of moist areas. Anyway, i ain’t gone to lie, its going to take you a while, few years, to get this under control but you can do it, and you’ll see significant improvement each year.

I’d spray the lawn now with the winter weed cocktail of 8.5 oz of Hi Yield atrazine + 1 oz of Fertilome weed free zone + 2 teaspoons of Hi Yield spreader/stricker mixed in 1 or 2 gallons of water and spray that over 1000 sq ft. Then repeat in about 3 weeks. When it warms up to about 85 F, spray weeds with metsulfuron methyl (MSM Turf). Then in the fall, mid-September I’d apply preemergent herbicide either prodiamine or Dimension (read the other thread on this), and then begin applying pre-emergent next spring. You can also apply pre-emergent herbicide in the next week or 2 if you are able.

Fertilize the lawn in mid-late March with a lawn fertilizer with repeat applications for St Augustine - check the chart in the lawn management publication I posted earlier for timing of additional applications. I’m not a big fan of weed & feed fertilizer and generally don’t recommend it but in your case I might make an exception, at least for your first fertilizer application. I’ll think that over.

Also, set your lawnmower to cut the grass/weeds at a height of about 3 inches. That is the recommendation for St Augustine.

Unless you live in the piney woods area, it’s not likely you’ll need lime, but pulling lawn soil samples and having them analyzed by the LSU AgCenter will help. Soil sample boxes should be available at a good retail plant nursery, and certainly at the parish extension office.

I’ll let you digest this, others can weigh in with their thoughts/suggestions, and you go from there.