My yard has died

curtiskas – posted 19 December 2001 08:06

Help! Two summers ago we has a nice loking healthy St Augustine backyard lawn. We had a 3 foot diameter wading pool for my 4 year old, which left dead spots. The dead spots came back at first, but then didn’t and spread to the whole yard. Now all St. Augustine grass is dead. Now have bare spots, weeds, and ugly patches of unknown grass types. How can I get my yard back? Thanks for help.

seed – posted 19 December 2001 17:53

curtiskas, first, I wouldn’t blame the wading pool necessarily. And it would be good to review the nature of the damage to guess what may have killed the lawn. Chinch bugs are one of the few things that can wipe out a whole lawn of St. Augustinegrass. If it’s something else like poor irrigation coverage, you’d probably know it and can correct it preemptively. But the chinch bugs are best treated when they are active and the grass starts to go down. Herbicide injury is another common cause of an entire lawn dying.

Unless there are pretty well scattered pieces of St. Augustine, you will have to do some replanting. And it will be difficult with all those weeds present, so sodding might be indicated. If it’s in really bad shape, and even if you are planting plugs, it might be a good idea to use Roundup to spray out the weeds (and unfortunately killing what little St. Augustine is present), to get a clean start.

Phil