my grass is brown and dead in large patches-- pretty sure it is bug problems since i had all these tiny moths in the spring --
in some of these spots i would like to take advantage of the grass removal to start some drought resistant planting--replacing the lawn with other plants --
do i still have to get rid of the bugs or are they only interested in grass?
also i plan do this in the fall--so i guess i would either let the rest of the grass die too or kill the pests and then wait till fall
i need your help and advice
grass damage
Well, that sounds like a good plan, but I am afraid that if you leave the healthy grass surrounding the bare patch with the plant in it, that the healthy grass would soon invade the space where your plants are.
Also your bare patches may not be in the right places and the plants might look out of place.
If you want to eliminate the grass and plant drought tolerant plants it id best to have a plan first, so your plants will be where you want them according to your design.
We have eliminated the grass in our front yard and replaced it with Texas native plants.
We first drew a plan to scale of our front yard, and decided where we wanted the beds and paths to be. It is very important to consider foot traffic patterns so you don't make it difficult to navigate around the beds.
Then we asked all our friends to save their newspapers for us, and also we took advantage of all the tree trimming last winter by asking tree companies to dump on our driveway and ended up with three truckloads of free mulch.
We laid down flat edging to mark the shapes of the beds and paths, also edging around the curb to hold the mulch in.
After that, we started laying down newspaper at least 8 layers thick wetting it first and overlapping it so no light could get through and doing only about 5 feet and then covering the paper with the mulch leaving the edge exposed for next section.
It took a good 5 months to get the mulching finished and now I am working on the planting. I plant by digging a hole through the mulch and newspaper adding some compost and water to settle the plant in.
I think it looks great and no more mowing and edging, I will try to post pictures when the plants are growing well.
This is probably more than you had in mind, but you could do it on a smaller scale.
Josephine.
Yeah, I would say best identify the reason the grass is dying, and then you can make an informed decision about whether it's a threat to the new planting. You could do that and any other prep work over the next couple of months, and be in good shape to plant when summer eases a bit.
There is drought resistant grass - buffalo and blue grama for low ones - so possibly you could meet that goal and still have lawn (and it might not look as odd in the transition).