You might consider an alternative to conventional turf grasses and try a mix of some relatively tame prairie grasses. In Texas we have a blend of buffalo grass, curly mesquite, and blue grama called Habiturf. Another alternative is a mix of wheatgrasses which grow well in your area along with blue grama and possibly others I'm not aware of. These are slow growing grasses which happen to make an excellent lawn. The drawback is that when they do produce a seed head, it might shoot up 14 inches. Lawn owners won't tolerate that so they are left out of the mix for typical homeowners. But the good news is the well behaved grasses don't send those seed heads up very often. You might get away with mowing only 4 times per year and never fertilizing. Here is a picture of a mostly wheatgrass lawn mixed with blue grama and strawberry clover. The lawn is in the Salt Lake City area and is owned by bpgreen. You would have to find the varieties of wheatgrasses which grow in your area. Google is your friend. When it comes time to renovate, since you have enough land to justify it, get someone with a box blade to scrape off the surface. Before you do that, you might want to kill the bermuda and other weeds which will return. That is a 3 week process, so plan ahead. Plowing will not kill the alfalfa. That will require a program of 2-4,d (as found in Weed-B-Gone Clover, Chickweed, and Oxalis), Banvel (farm and ranch store), and roundup. Much of the alfalfa today is immune to Round Up, so you can't just hope that will work. It is not immune to 2-4,d though.

Hey all, so in the end, it just turns out that there was a lot of ants and those buffalo treehoppers (which I took are care best I could). However, on my other plant at home, I noticed these tiny little insects and I'm having trouble identifying them. They are only on the top of the leaves or on the buds of the peppers and seem to leave some sort of clear excretion behind. Here are some pics, did my best to capture them: (on the leaf): (here you can see it on the one pod that is focused in on:) (unfocused, but they are on the pod just north of the big one hanging down:) (another pic, mostly to show the excretion they leave behind.. its shiny) Thanks in advance for any insight!

Thanks for the info. About 30 years ago, this variety became very popular as a hanging basket plant. It was easy and fast and looked harmless. I had a plant shop around Christmas, and I had one basket left over at the end of the season. Without even thinking, I pulled the plant out of the basket and threw it into the woods. I didn't think it would survive the winter on top of the ground, so I was surprised the next summer to see it sending out new growth. I left it alone since it was in an area where it couldn't do any real harm. The area was overgrown with poison ivy and every other undesirable plant, so I didn't care. The lamium has destroyed nearly all the native undesirables and totally taken over with no work on my part. I can't find any trace of poison ivy that has not been smothered out. Even the mugwart is nearly all gone. I only wish the yellow flowers would last longer. If I had it to do over again, I'd plant sarcococa. IMO, that's the best ground cover plant in existence. It spreads very slowly for the first few years, but it gets extremely thick as the clumps grow together. The flowers are almost totally inconspicuous, but they are very fragrant in very early spring. The foliage is very dark green and very drought tolerant. Some winter-burn might occur from a dry, severely cold winter with insufficient snow cover, but it covers over as soon as the new growth comes out. It's very hard to find and usually very expensive... unless you know someone who will give you a few pieces. It grows just like pachysandra with underground runners. If I were more ambitious, I'd plant them side-by-side to see which plant wins a survival contest. I'd hope it was the sarcococa.

We are having the same problem here in SoCal - Anaheim area. Our house is 40 years old and I am sure they have just built a colony under the cool slab. Recently, I was converting the bathroom to a dual sink and had to cut into the slab and uncovered a colony right in the middle of the house under the slab. The little buggers just crawl through any crack. They will also, much to my dismay, chew away at plastic, caulking and grout, until they get a hole big enough to come through. I also hate to use pesticide, but my wife found out that Simple Green is lethal to the little pests. And the effects are long term, too, i.e. they will not come back to that spot, provided you don't wipe it down clean again. They also seem to be driven by extreme heat, such as we are having right now in SoCal. I think they come out looking for water and other food sources, when it gets very dry and hot. My only blessing in the dark cloud is that 1) they don't bite or sting, otherwise it would be a whole different story, and horror one at that; 2) there aren't any subterranian termites under my house, since ants and termites are mortal enemies. I am going to try the boric around the house and see if that doesn't help. I know that their colonies are not hundreds or thousands of ants, but literally millions of them, and they are highly organized and intelligent for ants, which makes it frustrating. I can see them communicating which in itself it fascinating, but scary, too. But like I said, try Simple Green inside the house.