great pics. I don't know anything about a helpful solution but you have your work cut out for you there. There's a few attractive bushes, but that lawn is worse than mine and mine ain't good. Good luck with it.

I don't want to use St. Augustine anymore because all it does is die every time there is a drought and I am tired of putting down sod.

St Augustine is a hassle because you have to water it every week in the summer. Bermuda is a hassle because you have to mow it every week and twice a week when it is growing fast (most of the spring and summer). Bermuda is also a hassle because it will jump over, under, and through barriers to invade the rest of the garden. Also bermuda will not survive where there is much shade. See the spots where you still have St Aug...those spots will never have bermuda because it is too shady.

I don't have a sprinkler system so I move sprinklers and soakers around which is a hassle.

Get rid of those wacky little yellow sprinklers and the twirly thing. Since the 1960s I've used every sprinkler there is, twice, and finally came back to the oscillator. It puts out an even pattern of water at a slow rate. This is the oscillator I like now (THIS ONE). It waters the entire lawn at one time. The new turbo design seems to water much more evenly and even lasts longer than the mechanical linkage types (the cheap ones). The oscillator takes hours and hours to water but we only get to water once a week anyway. I set it up with THIS TIMER to water during the San Antonio restriction hours. It's about half the cost from last year (grrr). I love it. I've used several others and they all have issues. This one just works. It's no hassle to follow the SA watering guidelines any more. If you ever need to get a new hose, get one of the Craftsman hoses at Sears. They have a lifetime guarantee. I have not paid for a new hose since the 1980s. No questions asked and no receipt needed either. Try that with a Gilmour hose at Home Depot.

How can I remove the dead St. Augustine thatch and what are some alternatives that will survive harsh south Texas droughts?

The best way to remove the dead St Aug is with a vertical mower, power rake, slit seeder, or any other tool with vertical cutters. You'll find them at rental centers - not Home Depot. Those tools will slice through everything and into the soil per your adjustment. I would set it to just barely touch the soil. Run it all directions and blow the chaff into a pile to compost.

What's a good way to keep Bermuda from growing in the beds?

Kill all the bermuda. That's the only way unless you want to be out there every week keeping it out. If you poured a solid concrete barrier six inches deep and six inches wide, you would still have to use the string trimmer every week to keep the bermuda from crawling over the top.

Some of your weeds did not die because their leaves are hydrophobic - they shed water. PULL THOSE NOW! In particular there is a weed with very sticky leaves growing up your fence behind the purple heart plants. Find all instances of that thing and get it out. It pulls out very easily but it also spreads f-a-s-t and v-e-r-y easily. Get it all, NOW. The rest of your weeds might not have died because they are not even healthy enough to take up the Round up. Try fertilizing now and then spraying again in 2 weeks.

I did not see any bamboo but it is easy to control. The giant rhizomes growing underground have roots coming off of them. Cut through those roots and the plant dies. You don't have to remove the rhizomes, but you do have to dig around to find the roots.

You got lucky with your red-tip photinia. We got the yellow tip photinia. They looked awful all year long, so we pulled them out. Apparently San Antonio soil is not conducive to the red tip feature. Both your purple sage and the photinia will enlarge themselves with proper watering until you can no longer get to the crepe myrtle in the corner. You might want to rethink that whole corner.

Your mountain laurel in the other corner likes very full sun. If that fence to to the south and the taller bush is to the east, it is not getting enough sun. It will grow but the trunks will not be strong enough to stand upright. Keep the lower leaves trimmed off below the fence so the sun hits all the leaves above the fence. That will help it become more upright and strengthen the trunks.

Having said all that, I would go back to St Augustine and learn how to care for it. If you don't want to do much, you can let it grow without mowing it. I'm doing that right now with a house 100 miles south of you in George West. It is an experiment to see how long the tall grass can go without mowing. My only concern about it is snakes but you would not have to worry about that in SA...at least in theory. Your green belt might concern you on that aspect. I have not watered it since October (according to my water company who called last week to see if I was on vacation). The grass looks great and did even before we got the rain. If you go back to St Aug, only mow it at the mower's highest setting. Tall St Aug will withstand the drought much better than scalped St Aug. Or let it grow. I know for a fact that very tall St Aug will really withstand the drought for a good long time without water.

Hi dchall,

Thanks for giving me such thorough advice.

I will take care of those weeds ASAP and start yanking them up. I resprayed this weekend, but may fertilize too if this application fails. You can see some of the bamboo shoots around the Photinia (one is behind it). The bamboo comes from behind the fence and the neighbor's yard to the right (where it took over his yard). Fortunately, it has only stayed primarily in this corner over the past 6 years after I annihilated it by pulling up the roots. But it is insidious.

Regarding the corner with the 3 shrubs, do you think I can keep the Photinia and evergreen trimmed so they don't block access? I am trying to get the crepe to grow vertical by trimming off unnecessary branches. I planted all three of these shrubs and the Photinia and Evergreen, I must admit, have grown like crazy over the past 3 years. I guess I planted them too close together.

I have had terrible luck with St. Augustine in the backyard and have sodded several times over the years. It's very labor intensive to till and re-sod and watering in my backyard moving sprinklers around is a chore. I was able to keep that grass alive for about 6-7 months into the drought before it started to die from ZERO rainfall. In the front yard, it's different because I have shade trees, and though the shaded areas look kind of weak, at least it lived.

I was hoping that perhaps there is another grass I could use that could be seeded after I remove all the weeds and thatched St. Augustine. I was wondering about Buffalo grass as it's a native grass and I have no kids or dog to run it down. I don't know much about it or how well it will grow. I will say that the soil around my house is 16 ft of clay and pretty fertile and just about anything grows in it. My end goal is to get something pleasant looking that isn't too labor intensive.

If St. Augustine is the best solution, then I need to make sure that a new installation of it does not fail because it's becoming a real pain doing this every 2 years. I do all the labor myself. Perhaps I didn't fertilize it correctly or not enough water. I'm not sure, but it eventually just failed without any rainfall last year despite my watering about once a week.

There is no other grass that will do well in your yard. The problem is the fences, shrubs, and buildings casting a shadow. You can have bermuda or buffalo growing in the middle but they will thin out where they don't get full sun. Bermuda will do much better than buffalo in that regard. Another choice is a blend of zoysia grasses. Most zoysia will do well in the full sun but there is one that does very well in shady areas. It is called Shadow Turf and is available in San Antonio at Fanick's Nursery off on Holmgren off of WW White road. Call around in your neighborhood to see if you can get it closer. It seems kind of expensive but it spreads fairly fast for zoysia. If you plugged it in now, by July it would 'suddenly' pop up all over the place and start to fill in. This time next year it should be in getting nice. Zoysia spreads but does not thicken as fast as bermuda or St Aug. Shadow turf is even more insidious than bermuda. It goes deeper looking for places to invade. You'd have to put a barrier 8 inches deep to keep it out of a garden. St Augustine has the advantage of no underground rhizomes. Only surface runners (stolens).

Never till the soil in preparation for grass. There, does that make it easier to redo your yard?

Seriously, never till the soil in preparation for grass. Tilling fluffs up the top of the soil but you will end up with a bottom layer that is uneven. When you level the top off with an uneven subsurface, after the soil settles it will settle unevenly leaving a bumpy surface. The easiest way to fix a bumpy surface is to spread sand. The best way, if you don't already have much sand in your soil is to resurface the soil you have. That can be a delicate job but no harder than rototilling. You need to find the high spots and scrape them off to fill the low spots. I'm not sure there is a really easy way to do that with hand tools. Normally it would be done with a tractor and box blade but the tractor would not fit through your gate. If you are willing to redo the entire back yard, then pull down some fence and let the tractor do its thing. It would take about an hour for a yard your size.

St Aug is easy to deal with in my opinion. Mow at the highest setting, water deeply (about an inch) infrequently (monthly now working up to every 7 days in the summer). Fertilize 3x per year with chemicals or as often as you want with organic fertilizer. Organic fertilizer is not as hard as you might think. Go to the Organic Gardening forum at GW and find the FAQs. The Organic Lawn Care FAQ is at the bottom of the list. You'll be surprised at the approach. Here, I'll post a picture showing the effectiveness of organic fertilizer on a zoysia lawn...

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The picture was taken by mrmumbles in June 2011, 4 weeks after the application in May. You can see the improved color, density, and growth. Organic fertilizer is "slow release" so you can't expect greening over night like with some chemicals. But it definitely works.

Yes you can keep the shrubs trimmed to keep access to the corner (and the bamboo). Tell your neighbor that bamboo is not that hard to grub out. If he would like the name of someone who can do that, I can help. Leo's Lawn Service is the name. I can get you a phone number.

If I understand this correctly, then I need to first kill/pull all the weeds. Then get a vertical mower and remove the thatch and dead weed materials. Then I need to level the soil (not till) with sand?

I am going to do this myself and don't wish to tear up fence, so I think I would prefer a more manual method and go at it peasant style as I am able-bodied. Do I take sand and soil mix and throw it on the ground and try to even it out with a rake?

Do you think I will need additional topsoil to support St. Augustine or Zoysia? As for the Zoysia growing in the beds, I was thinking about installing some new bed liners and mulch in the beds I have now to prevent grass from growing on it. I primarily just want shrubs growing in them, not flowers or other plants. I know that mulch breaks down after a while as do the liners and grass can get in there again. But it seems to work pretty good for about a year.

I will look into that breed of Zoysia you recommend. Would you say it's more drought resistant than St. Augustine? I'm more interested in a grass that will survive and choke out weeds than growing all over the place at this point.

Thanks for all the advice thus far. You've been very helpful and wish I had posted here years ago.

If you give me that number, I will pass it on to my neighbor since his lawn guys didn't kill the bamboo.