Is it time to outlaw St. Augustine grass? (Austin, Santa Fe: how much, homes)

[jobert]

Zoysia has a smaller blade, no runners, grows slower, doesn't die and go bald like St. Augustine, but goes light tan when lacking water. Basically it's somwhere between bermuda and St. A.

[calel]

I would love to rip out the St. Augustine grass in my front yard and replace it with some good thick bushes and drought friendly groundcover. Sadly, I don't think the landlord would approve of that.

I've managed to go without watering the lawn so far, thanks to having a mostly shaded yard. It's gone dormant, but it's still relatively green. There's only one really dry, dying spot that sits in the sun that I'm trying to rescue by hand watering, but I think it's a losing battle this summer.

[iceshots]

Someone has to come up with a grass that will allow you to plant in plugs, or seeds, into an existing healthy lawn, and have the new grass crowd out the old grass.

I would love to replace my St. Augustine lawn with Zoysia or the new Buffalo grass, but ripping out the existing lawn would be a real pain. Plant new plugs and let them spread would be the perfect lazy way of doing it.

[centralaustinite]

Originally Posted by iceshots

Someone has to come up with a grass that will allow you to plant in plugs, or seeds, into an existing healthy lawn, and have the new grass crowd out the old grass.

I would love to replace my St. Augustine lawn with Zoysia or the new Buffalo grass, but ripping out the existing lawn would be a real pain. Plant new plugs and let them spread would be the perfect lazy way of doing it.

That is exactly how zoysia works! I can still remember my grandfather putting in zoysia plugs, it is very dense and will crowd out other grass.

[Lil_ly]

Is the above really true? It seems to me that the St Aug. is quite invasive and will crowd out anything else. I hate St Aug and would LOVE to get rid of it, but it seems like there is no way unless all my neighbors also get rid of theirs or I put up some kind of barrier surrounding my yard to keep the neighboring St Aug. out.

[love roses]

A neighbor down the road from me put some black garden liner on his property line next to his neighbor who has St. Augustine. He tamped it down far enough that it's not visible unless you're standing right over it. It seems to have worked. Garden Border is what I mean, not liner. You've seen it. It's that long thin plastic-y stuff.

[tibbar]

I have St Augustine that came over from my neighbors. I had Bermuda and was happy to not have to water it very much. Under my Oak trees was a large bed of ground cover that was never watered. The problem with the ground cover was it played nursery to the Copperheads. I can't stand walking out my front door onto my sidewalk and seeing several baby copperheads, out came the ground cover even though it took little water.

I water once a week now and make sure I soak the lawn when I do water.

[love roses]

Oh, I forgot about the copperheads! I was pulling weeds yesterday and sweeping leaves away and only thought about running across a rat snake. No snakes, thank goodness, but I totally forgot about the Copperheads!

[CptnRn]

Originally Posted by centralaustinite

That is exactly how zoysia works! I can still remember my grandfather putting in zoysia plugs, it is very dense and will crowd out other grass.

I will give this a try. It won't cost much to buy a few squares of zoysia and test it out.

[woodinvilleguy]

We compromised on xeroscaping; we worked with a landscape designer to split our yard up into something combined xeroscaping and sod. The sod is main for my wife and kids. I can totally see swapping out my st. augustine for zoysia, but it won't be until I can afford to do it. How does it handle being next to St. AUgustine from neighbors?