Your watering sounds perfect, but that sure looks like it's dry. Are you sure your sprinkler provides an inch in the dead looking area? There is a very nice looking circular shaped area on the upper left in your picture. Then it appears to look worse and worse as you get away from that central green area. If you are sure it is getting an inch right there, then the alternative is a fungus is cutting off the moisture either at the roots or up the stem of the grass. Usually a fungus grows in a circle shape; however, in your case everything but the dead area is a circle shape. I suppose it could still be a disease. My experience with zoysia is that once it turns brown it will remain brown until the following spring no matter what you do to it. It doesn't matter whether it turns brown in November or in May, it remains brown the rest of the season until spring whether you throw the kitchen sink at it or ignore it completely. If this is a fungus, your only approach is to use an organic product. Chemical fungicides are not supposed to be applied if the temps are going to get above 80 degrees F in the next 48 hours. In San Antonio the last day for applying that sort of chemical is sometime in March or April. The organic approach is to apply ordinary corn meal at a rate of 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. You can find it at your local feed store - or you can tell me what side of town you are on and I can direct you to a source nearby. But even if it is a fungus and you do kill it, I still don't have much hope for a green lawn this season. If you have the same variety of zoysia as your neighbor, then you should probably listen to him. If not, you either need to find someone who does or look for other options. One option is to change to a grass that can recover from simple goofs or natural disasters. That list includes all the other grasses plus, possibly, whatever zoysia variety your neighbor has.

CMK, I remember reading you have drainage issues. We had a little bit of that ‘wet without draining’ in early spring, a couple of times when it rained and the ground was still frozen. I thought I was going to have trouble and I don’t know why I didn’t. I normally have good drainage though, so that must make the difference. I’m sorry you don’t. :-( That must be a particularly aggravating problem. I wonder if you’ve ever considered raised beds? I had plants very slow to show up this spring, so I was considering that I might have lost them, and at the time, I was thinking maybe I should add more conifers, until I visited the Conifer forum in the spring and they were posting long lists of plants they lost! So, if you are thinking about it, I’d read some of their posts on which ones they lost. :-) Mnwsgal, sorry to hear of your losses too. I have never had much luck wintering over in the garage. And the snowplow frequently digs into some edge of the front yard. We have a bed that borders the street, but it has a rock edge to it, which I suppose must help. Of course, they don't actually see the rocks under the snow, and once they did plow into those. Wow, what a noise that made! And 12ft of rock edge had to be reset, but I didn't lose any plants. [g] I wish we had sidewalks.

I've been reading a lot on spider mites this week. There is another excellent thread on spider mite control here on gardenweb somewhere. The Cal Extension blog also just put out a blog about soap use on mites, and how it doesn't interrupt. I'm trying to find it. I'm with Patty on feeding plants really well -- spraying with chemicals makes me fear that I've undone all the good work souping up the the good microbes and critters in the soil. On the other hand, the Calif extension just blogged about soap use NOT interrupting the work of good arthropods, worms etc. Go figure. (Trying to find that link too.) Below is a study -- both worm castings and aerated compost tea from worm castings have reduced spider mites. SUPPRESSING PLANT PARASITIC NEMATODES AND ARTHROPOD PESTS WITH VERMICOMPOST TEAS BioCycle December 2007, Vol. 48, No. 12, p. 38 Greenhouse trials confirm that the sooner a tea is used after it is brewed, the more effective it is in influencing plant growth and suppressing diseases. Part II Clive A. Edwards, Norman Q. Arancon, Eric Emerson and Ryan Pulliam PRODUCTION and use of aqueous extracts of thermophilic composts and vermicomposts, commonly termed teas, has expanded rapidly in the last two to three years, particularly since there is now a range of commercial tea brewing equipment available that can produce large or small quantities of teas. Unfortunately, there are relatively few published scientific studies which have reviewed the methods of production and uses of compost or vermicompost teas, optimal dilutions or application rates. These teas have been used extensively, particularly by organic gardeners and farmers, to promote plant growth by application to soils as drenches, and to suppress plant diseases by soil or foliar sprays. These uses are still increasing as their methods of application and effectiveness are gradually being established. Research in our laboratory at The Ohio State University has shown clearly that some form of agitation or aeration during production of vermicompost teas is necessary, if the teas are to be effective in promoting crop growth and suppressing pests and diseases. We have research under way into the shelf-life of vermicompost teas under different temperatures and in a range of containers. We have demonstrated the transport of microbial activity and diversity, key nutrients, and enzymatic activity from solid vermicomposts into teas. Additionally, all our experience of the use of teas in greenhouse trials has confirmed that the sooner a vermicompost tea is used after it is brewed, the more effective it is in influencing plant growth and in suppressing pests and diseases. We have tested vermicompost teas extracted from vermicomposts produced from a range of animal manures such as pig or cattle wastes, as well as paper and food wastes, and all have been effective in promoting plant growth and disease suppression, independent of nutrient supply. After many laboratory and greenhouse trials, we decided that the optimal quantities of solid vermicomposts to water ratios were: 1:5 (20 percent), 1:10 (10 percent) and 1:20 (5 percent). EFFECTS OF VERMICOMPOST TEAS ON PLANT PARASITIC NEMATODES We have demonstrated clearly that solid vermicomposts can suppress plant parasitic nematodes in the field (Arancon et al. 2003). Our experiments on the effects of vermicompost teas on nematodes were in the laboratory and greenhouse, in soils that had been artificially infested with the root knot of nematode (Meloidogyne incognita), which is a very serious pest of a wide range of crops all over the world. Six-week-old tomato seedlings were transplanted into 10 cm diameter pots containing a sand and loam (1:3 ratio) soil mixture to which the test tea treatments were applied. Drench treatments of teas were applied at seedling transplanting, and every two weeks thereafter. One week after transplanting 10,000 Meloidogyne hapla eggs were added to each plant pot in suspension in tap water. The eggs were collected from cultures maintained on infested tomato plants. Each treatment was replicated four times. Pots into which tomato plants had been transplanted were arranged on benches in a completely randomized design and the greenhouse was maintained at 25°C. Plants were watered regularly with tempered line water. Thirty days after infestation with nematodes, soil was removed from the pots and the roots were washed to assess the extent of root damage and the numbers of root knots. The washed roots were rated for numbers of root knot galls and the numbers of galls per unit wet weight of roots counted. The effects of the nematodes on plant height were determined by growth measurements, including heights, leaf areas, fresh and the dry weights of leaves from plant tops and the dry weights of all above-ground tissues at the end of the experiment. The relative growth of the tomato plants in response to the nematode infestations, after 30 days, are illustrated in Figure 1. The differences in growth between treatments, in response to the vermicompost teas were spectacular, and the reductions in numbers of root knot galls on the tomato roots in response to the vermicompost tea applications was considerable (Figures 2 and 3). These effects of vermicompost teas on plant parasitic nematode attacks were very similar to those in experiments that used solid vermicompost substituted into Metro-Mix 360 in the greenhouse (Arancon et al. 2003). EFFECTS OF VERMICOMPOST TEAS ON ARTHROPOD PESTS We have shown that solid vermicomposts can suppress spider mite, mealy bug and aphid populations in the field (Arancon et al. 2007). For our preliminary experiments into the suppression of arthropod pests by vermicompost teas, we chose two important groups of plant pests, aphids and spider mites. For the spider mite experiments, four tomato plants were placed into each 0.2 mm mesh cage (40 cm x 30 cm x 30), and 100 two-spotted spider mites (Tetranychus sp.) were released into each infested cage, with four replicate cages for each treatment. The plants were treated with either water (control), aerated thermophilic 20 percent compost tea, or aerated 5 percent, 10 percent, or 20 percent vermicompost tea, produced from food waste vermicompost. The damage to the plants in these cages was assessed on a damage rating of 0 (no damage) to 5 (100 percent damage), eight days after pests were introduced into the cages. There were four replicate cages with no spider mite infestations, in order to assess any changes in leaf weights caused by the spider mite infestations. Because spider mites are so small we did not count them, instead we assessed the amounts of the distinct damage that they caused to the plants. All three soil application rates of vermicompost teas decreased the amounts of damage by the spider mites compared with the water control significantly (P < 0.05). By comparison the traditional thermophilic compost tea had no significant effect on the spider mite damage. We used the same experimental protocol in experiments on aphids. In these experiments, 100 aphids (Myzus persicae) were released onto four tomato plants, in each of the cages infected with aphids. A set of cages that had no aphid infestations was used to assess any changes in leaf weights caused by the aphids. The numbers of aphids on each plant were counted 13 days after infestation. The results are summarized in Figure 4. Clearly, all three dilutions of aerated vermicompost teas suppressed the aphid populations significantly (P < 0.05) compared with the water control treatment whereas the aerated thermophilic compost tea had no significant effects on the aphid populations. These results on the suppression of aphids and spider mites by vermicompost teas were very similar to those obtained from growing plants in the greenhouse in Metro Mix 360, substituted with a range of solid vermicomposts (Arancon et al. 2007). The suppression of aphids is particularly important since they are key vectors in the transmission of plant viruses. It seems clear that there is a good potential for suppression of arthropod pests by both vermicomposts and vermicompost teas using methods very acceptable to organic growers and farmers. The authors are in the Soil Ecology Laboratory at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. FURTHER READING Arancon, N.Q., Yardim, E., Edwards, C.A., Lee, S., 2003. The Trophic diversity of nematode communities in soils treated with vermicomposts. Pedobiologia 47, 736-740. Arancon, N.Q., Edwards, C.A., Oliver, T.J., Byrne, R.J. 2007 Suppression of two-spotted spider mite (Tetranychus urticae), mealy bugs (Pseudococcus) and aphid (Myzus persicae) populations and damage by vermicomposts. Crop Protection 26, 26-39.

I don't know how to clear ivy. I would probably just spray it with Roundup, but it sounds like you want to avoid chemicals. If you did spray it with Roundup, you'd want to avoid getting any of the herbicide on the other plants you want to keep. You can get some good garden design ideas from a few books I've enjoyed: Tracy DiSabato Aust has a nice one called "The Well-Designed Mixed Garden." I read it last year and found it very informative, especially about color theory. Sunset publishes something called the "Western Landscape Book" which is a companion to the "Western Garden Book" which is something like a bible to western gardeners. I'd get both if I were you. I depend on the Western Garden Book as an encyclopedia of plants. You should be warned, though, that Sunset created their own system of garden zones, which are nothing like the USDA zones most of us use when talking about plant hardiness. I think I'm in a zone 3 for Sunset and zone 6 for USDA -- just be sure when you look at Sunset's plant info you realize that if they say a plant's hardy in zone 3 that really means zone 6. Could be confusing, but it's still a great book. There are also some online databases with good plant information, sort of like the encyclopedia concept. One is Dave's Garden and its PlantFiles section. That database is created by thousands of gardeners who contribute information and photos. I've also found that the Missouri Botanical Garden is a great resource, because they're in a zone 6 just like where I live. What I like the best is their database of plants, which includes a link for most flowers that you can click to see exactly what weeks that flower was in bloom in their gardens for several years running. This link takes you to their alphabetical plant index, but you can enter a plant name in the search box to more efficiently find info on plants. Good luck, and keep coming back with questions -- there are lots of people around to help.