Welcome to GardenWeb. Trust me - we were all novices once. You do not need to till. In fact if you have any St Aug left at all it will eventually come back completely if you use good management practices. St Augustine will send runners out about 10 feet every growing season. It will not be very dense in the first year but it will the second year. You can speed that process up considerably by placing a few pieces of sod around. Of course if you can afford it you can have an instant lawn by completely resodding. St Augustine does not come in seed, so sod is your only choice. Are you sure you had chinch bugs or could it have been drought neglect? St Aug will die completely if it goes unwatered in full sun for a few weeks. It could have been a combination of both with the drought stress making the grass more susceptible to pests. Most people find it easier to spray to kill weeds before sodding. There are two kinds of sprays for two kinds of weeds. There is a third kind of spray that will handle both kinds of weeds at once. Again, most people jump directly to the spray that will kill everything. The most popular name is Round-Up but any product with glyphosphate in it will do the same thing. Spray the weeds and try very hard to keep the overspray off of the current St Augustine or it will die. Spray the weeds and let them die for a few days. If any weeds sprout in a week, spray again. Rake all the dead stuff up and your soil is ready for sod. Don't get the sod and then start the spraying process. Sod sitting on a pallet is stressed enough already. It needs to go on the ground immediately upon getting it home. Then you need to press the sod down to get good contact with the underlying soil. Roots will not grow through the air, so press it down. If you have a large area, rent a water fillable roller. If you have a small area, then just walk on every square inch of the sod to press it down. If the sod is dormant, water it once for about 10 minutes and then treat it normally. You do not need fertilizer until after the grass has been mowed for the second time this spring. Over the years of reading this forum, I've been able to summarize the best practices of the successful grass growers. Watering: Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means for an hour at a time. Infrequently means monthly during the cool season and no more than weekly in the heat of summer. There are a few factors that affect this, like your soil type, humidity, rainfall, shade, and the height of your grass. In Houston weekly should be plenty. By watering like this you'll give the soil a chance to dry out completely at the surface but remain moist deeper in the soil. This encourages deeper rooting and more drought resistance in case you leave and the grass doesn't get watered. Mowing: Mulch mow at your mower's highest setting. St Augustine never ever needs to be mowed at a lower setting. I usually recommend to St Aug owners that they weld the mower at the highest setting because eventually someone will come along and try to do you a favor by lowering the mower to the lowest setting. How high you mow is up to you and your spouse if any. My wife insists that the highest setting looks shaggy, but I'm in 80% shade so the turf is not that dense and it does look a little shaggy compared to turf in full sun. So we compromise and I mow at the second highest setting. Fertilizer: Fertilize regularly. If you are using synthetic fertilizer you can start with the second mowing of real grass (not weeds). In Houston that might be in March. You can fertilize again on Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. Those are easy dates to remember. If you choose to use organic fertilizer, start on Washington's Birthday, then Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving. With organic you can start earlier and do a summer application. You can't do that with synthetic. If you follow that plan you should not have weeds because the St Augustine will be so dense.

The problem is lack of water Period. OK. That seems like a long time to run the sprinkler for. You need to achieve 3/4 to 1" of water no matter how long it takes. Try a different rotor head that will throw more water, or change the nozzle in your current heads if you can. Honestly, running it for 45 minutes drenched the yard! Thats because we just received 3 days of soaking rain. It also doesn't explain why one of my problem areas received more water. If the problem was not enough water, it should be receiving less, right? Your talking about an 1/8" difference. If it would have been 1/2" or more difference then you might have an argument. What makes you think it's not enough water? Because you only applied an average of 3/16" of water. Can it be fungus? Chinch Bugs? No and once again, even if it was chinch bugs, you already treated for them. We have sandy soil in the Tampa Bay area. The problem areas you have are DEAD and are not going to get better over night. The good thing is that S.A. spreads by runners fairly rapdily. You could/should apply some compost to the dead areas to help/speed the process up. I strongly advise you read this whole thread again and follow the advise. By spring/early summer your problems should be much much better.

Hey I know this will blow ya'lls mind but I have lady bugs in my bedroom where I have a few brugs. These suckers have no bugs on them whatsoever other than the ladybugs once in awhile. However I have about 30 brugs on the bar under a grow light and those things stay infested with those little clear whitebugs. I suspect that the lady bugs are eatting the ones in the bedroom. Where as there are none in the kitchen area. Maybe I should take some in there and put them on the brugs. It would probably be safer than spraying once a week. Of course if I removed the leaves there would be fewer bugs too. Why didn't someone let me know just how many bugs we were talking about when growing these things inside? I may have put them all in the greenhouse instead of just a few of them. A little over a month ago the ladybugs where in swarms here around my house. You couldn't go outside without being attacked by them. They were flying everywhere, and it was like something from a horror movie. You sure didn't want to open your mouth while you where out there with them. LOL Anyway I don't know how they got into the bedroom but I thought what the heck, I'll just let them stay. It's actually the guest room anyway. Low and behold the ladybugs are now my guest and the brugs seem to be enjoying having them around. (grin). I can take some pictures of them but I don't know how to put them on the web. Don't bother with trying to tell me how, I'm old and it's more trouble than it's worth. Happy Gardening Marian

Well...dh has vetoed the idea of introducing clover into our lawn. I'm going to have him read your other, more recent post about it, greenjeans. Maybe it will convince him. He thinks the clover will take over completely. It's not that invasive, is it? I'll keep nematodes in mind if there's an invasion, tiddyt. I did some reading yesterday and it seems that they have to be mixed in with compost (or some such thing) and swept down into the turf, without watering the nematodes into the soil. The idea being that they must be at the surface of the soil where the bugs are in order to be effective. Sounds like a lot of work! I may just let the little buggers kill what lawn they want to, then turn those areas into flower/veggie beds. I'd rather plant & weed than mow, any day! Thanks again, Carol