zagyzebra I suspect you do not live in LA, because LA only gets into the mid 80s in the summer - and that is on a very warm day. I had to wear a sweater of windbreaker to stay warm all summer when I lived there. You have to move north or east to get the warm summers and then you're no longer in LA. However, that is not to disparage the choice of UC Verde for the OP. I wholeheartedly agree. The one caveat is that it needs more than 1/2 day of sunlight. If you have a south facing lawn then it is great for that lawn. If you have more shade than that or only 1/2 day full sunlight, then St Augustine or one of the shade tolerant zoysias would be the best choices.

Have to ask the OP, where do you live. SoCal is a big area from Ventura to Blythe to Heber to San Diego and back again. People grow Marathon in every corner even though they should not. Getting the old lawn out might take different approaches depending on where you live in the area. If you live west of I-5 or west of the 405 in the LA area, then Marathon would be fine, but watering every day is wrong no matter where you live. Sounds like you have a good head start on killing off the old Marathon. That was easy. For now if you water 3x per day very lightly (5-10 minutes) for a week, you should sprout all the weed seeds. Then you can spray those down with RoundUp. Continue watering like that for another week and spray any of the longer term seedlings or survivors again with RU. Then you can put down any new seed or sod you want.

California bentgrass? Probably standard creeping bentgrass for the California market. Yes, it is invasive and not a proper solution at all if you live east of the 405 or east of I-5.

Watering: Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, sprinkler and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the daytime air temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so it should work for you. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall.

LA only gets into the 80s in the summer? That's the funniest thing I've heard all week. No that's not true at all. We hit 114f this summer at my house and routinely get triple digits throughout the year. The other poster must have never ventured out from the coast.

The best lawn for Los Angeles is no lawn at all.

It's impossible for a native plant to be invasive. Aggressive yes, but not invasive as invasiveness is defined as exotic species displacing native species in the wild. If it's not an exotic species it can't be invasive.

dchall, I'm in Westlake Village. I usually just say north of LA (and west of San Fernando Valley) because nobody seems to know where Westlake Village is. The backyard gets pretty scorching under the afternoon sun. Knock on wood, but I haven't had a weed problem in the backyard in my lawn despite patches of dead bare areas. There are areas near the sprinklers that the Marathon 1 is still lush because the while the water was off for a month during July, it wasn't completely off so the sprinklers were still spraying everyday at a distance of 1-2 feet. What a pain. I'm still debating on pulling this lawn/sod out or re-seeding the same stuff with topsoil this November.

"No lawn at all" isn't an option.

I usually just say north of LA (and west of San Fernando Valley) because nobody seems to know where Westlake Village is

Having lived all over SoCal for 30 years, I completely understand. Certainly the climate has changed since I left in the 90s, so I will have to adjust for warmer summers. Still 114 is a rare occurrence probably happening during Santa Ana conditions. In your case, and in 95% of cases all over SoCal, Marathon is a poor choice simply due to the amount of water it takes to keep that cool season turf moist in the warmer climate. If your grass cannot thrive with the watering schedule I posted earlier, then it is not adapted to your area.

The UC Verde grass mentioned before is a fine bladed grass. It never gets seed heads so it never looks shaggy like common buffalo grasses. It does need 5 hours of unfiltered sunlight to look good. It needs less fertilizer and can be mowed at any height. UC Verde is only available in sod. Unlike most buffalo grasses, this one spreads and fills to become dense, but I do not know how fast.

St Augustine is a coarse bladed grass. It could be mistaken for crabgrass on first glance, but it is much better behaved. St Aug grows low when mowed low and upright the rest of the time. For the easiest care, mow it high. Mowing lower will encourage weeds. Fertilize St Aug in late May, early September, and November. St Augustine is only available in sod. It will spread about 15 feet in all directions per year.

Westlake Village and no lawn isn't an option? Fake turf. The new stuff looks pretty good.

The reference ET for fescue turf in Westlake Village at it's highest in July is about 7.5” for the month. So an inch a week won't cut it. You'll need 2" a week to account for irrigation inefficiency. If you pick something more drought tolerant it will still be at least 60% of that number and more likely to be 75-80%.

Thanks dchall. I measured the sprinkler output this morning for the backyard. It takes about 2 hours for the glass containers to fill 1 inch. After discussing the options with my wife, we'll stick to the current lawn for 1 year and see how it goes before switching to UC Verde. If it continues to die off for the next year, it'll just make removal an easier process. We don't want to make too many drastic changes after just moving in for a few months. We have a couple of higher priority projects at the moment. Thanks for your help and suggestions.

It never got above 89° at my house this summer, but I'm fairly close to the beach but still in Los Angeles (Westchester). We have a small amount of grass in our back yard, and it does not need all that much water because it does not get that hot here. I'm definitely west of I405, and I used to be west of Lincoln Blvd (Hwy 1), where the summers were even cooler.

I would not have a lawn if I lived in a hotter neighborhood.

The historical average reference evapotranspiration for San Antonio in July is 7.31 inches, so you would think 1 inch per week would be insufficient by more than 3 inches. Yet, I got away with watering 3/4-inch per week. The grass looked wilted at the end of a week, but it was far from dead.

The historical average reference evapotranspiration in Phoenix in June and July is 10 inches. It was a Phoenix lawn care professional, by the way, who spearheaded the idea of deep and infrequent watering on this forum back in the early 2000s. A friend of mine in Gilbert, AZ waters his St Augustine 3/4 inches, twice a week, for a monthly deficit of 4 inches. His lawn never looks wilted.

Nil13, before you fall on your sword on deep and infrequent watering, please try it. It costs you nothing. If it does not work well for you, a small adjustment from the baseline should be all you need to get a final plan. In no case should you have to water every day assuming you have a turn that is adapted to the area.

One of the problems with fake grass is litter and dirt accumulation. You need to hit it periodically (weekly?) with a leaf blower and monthly or so with forceful wash to keep the dust off.

Oh I'm a fan of deep watering and it works great with stuff other than turf. If you look at the irrigation trials up at UC Davis, they are keeping things pretty lush with three irrigation events a year based on a yearly ET0. Makes weekly look down right wasteful. I'm also a big fan of greywater but the crazy systems you would need for lawn irrigation are much too expensive. And when you get down to it, any yard that is perfectly watered will turn into a yard that has stupid amounts of water dumped on it in a few years when they sell. It's only necessary as some East Coast suburban signifier. All the HOA and municiple rules were ruled against years ago and are no longer enforceable.

If someone is on some adobe and by the coast, sure. That's not terrible. Sand in the valley? Pasadena? The only way the Huntington affords that are they have wells. But even they are succumbing. This is because this drought has left it dry AF in the soil profile. We had less than 5 inches last year and that's on the wrong end of a ten year drought. Water disappears PDQ. Which is why big long soil capacity irrigation events really make a difference.

Wrt to artificial turf, you're still going to have to blow and water it. The site is bound to have trees and other plants and their roots are going to occupy all that soil. Those will need irrigation, though it could be three times a year. That irrigation washes all the dust and dirt off. Plus dogs can't dig it up or discolor it. The new stuff is quite good with straw colored bits and other discolorations.

I went to school in Westchester years ago and that is right next to the beach. Like you can smell it close to the beach. It's also pretty high rent these days since El Segundo turned into Silicon Beach. Not that it was ever really low rent in the last 30 years.

Hey San Antonio! 111 degrees this summer on the UCLA campus. Unfortunately, global warming has hit LA. I remember those days when you'd have to wear a sweater throughout the summer and, unfortunately, they are long gone.

As for fake turf grass, just ugh! I truly love sitting on that beautiful patch of green, or doing exercise or playing with the dog or kid or sunbathing. Can't imagine deriving the same satisfaction from a plastic lawn. If you don't want to water so much, re-configure your landscape for a smaller lawn. But keep a patch of green! What's a home without one?

From mid 2012 through January 2015 I experimented with tall St Augustine in George West, TX. At first nobody cared, but toward the end someone complained to city council about my grass looking, "not manicured" and "breeding mosquitoes." It defs was not manicured, but there were no mosquitoes. I never did figure out where that came from, but it was written into the city ordinances. It was 32 inches tall in the back where nobody could see and it varied from 9 inches to about 15 in front depending on the amount of sun it got. 32 inches is as tall as St Aug will grow. The experiment was to see what the water requirements were for such tall grass. The answer is none. Once it got up to full height, that grass went months with no rain or irrigation. I had one part of the yard that got no irrigation at all from October 2012 until I sold it in Jan 2015. All it got was rain. The soil was sandy.

As an aside to that story, I gave the new owner instructions as to how to bring the lawn down from 18 inches (ordinance max) to 4 inches using a string trimmer first. He came in with a riding mower which broke under the strain. After fixing the mower, they mowed it down to 3 inches, did not water it, and it all died.

"But keep a patch of green! What's a home without one?"

A house without a patch of green would be the typical house for all of human history around the world except for a small aberration in North America between 1945 and the present day.

UC Verde is usually planted as plugs, not sod. As for Los Angeles not getting above the mid-80's, that might be true if you were standing at the shoreline in Malibu.

UC Verde Buffalo grass

UC Guide to Healthy Lawns

I think it is fine to have a small patch of grass, assuming you aren’t letting the water go onto the sidewalk or into the gutter. In fact for LA there isn’t much point in having a front lawn at all bc people rarely use them. Dogs, however, will. (A whole other subject. I like dogs. their owners? Not as often I am sorry to say.) A little patch in the back imo does no harm and is a joy if you use it.

I am not against fake grass, but it may make your area hotter. And, are they permeable now? We want whatever teeny tiny amount of rain we do get to go back in the groundwater, not into the gutter.

Meanwhile, for front yards there are some pretty good low water choices. I am no expert on them, but I’ve seen pics. I do think it can be tricky to make a low-water yard look good, bc so often they come out flat with no dimension. And it kills me to see a yard full of gravel. Still, better that than fake grass if it makes the water run off.

All due respect ... I don’t see any point in becoming extremist about all this. LA as it exists *shouldn’t* exist if we’re going to get technical. That said, we shouldn’t waste. But I say, if it goes back in the groundwater, it *was not* wasted. What would life be without greenery? I’ll be danged if I will kill all my plants just so more people can live here. Not going to happen.

Artificial turf is permeable.

We don't get much of our water from groundwater (12%) because our groundwater is too polluted. So importing water and using that on lawns is extremely wasteful. Watering with greywater that has already been used once however is a excellent way to recharge the aquifer. But greywater is difficult to use on lawns.

There are plenty of plants that are wonderfully green and floriferous all year round in SoCal that don't need much water. Heck, roses take less water than turf.

Went to a restaurant with artificial turf this weekend. Here's a pic...

You can see how it generally looks pleasing, especially from some distance. The closer you get the worse it looks. there is an obvious seam just outside the picture, but it doesn't detract materially from the look. The closer you get the more litter you see blown into it to make it look like it needs to be blown off. If you just want something green, then this might work. If you averse to plastic grass, then you might not like it so much.

OK it's been nearly a year. My front lawn (Marathon) is doing fine after adjusting many of the sprinkler heads. The side yard lawn was replaced by artificial turf. It became a disaster because it's now too hot for my three young kids to play. It will be ripped out and replaced with real grass again. My backyard lawn (the one baked in hot afternoon sun) grew back with all the winter rain. Strangely weeds were not an issue. But with summer temps regularly getting above 90 degrees, everything went dead again. We use the back lawn during warm seasons more than winter season, so we're going to commit to st Augustine or UC Verde for both the side yard and back yard. Kids will be playing. No dogs. Which should I go for?

Depends on which look you prefer. St. Augustine has wider blades and is a little harder on bare skin. They both use a lot less water than Marathon. http://ipm.ucanr.edu/TOOLS/TURF/

Because we wasted money on artificial turf, our budget for the lawn is restricted to bags of lawn turf seed, which excludes UC Verde and St Augustine. Any recommendations for my application? I'd like warm season turf seed if possible. Thinking of zoysia or bahiagrass. Seems like the major brands are Pennington and Scott's. What are your thoughts?

The budget would affect UC Verde, but not necessarily St Augustine. That depends on how big a hurry you're in. Where I live we buy St Augustine sod in pieces that are 18 inches by 24 inches for something less than $2. If you place a few of those around, they will take root and spread 10 to 15 feet in all directions every year. For example the first year you will see runners going out the designated distance. The second year those will shoot off in all directions along the original runner resulting in dense turf the entire extent of the first runner. That's how I've been doing my lawn since 2014. I never bought the pieces of grass, but that would have been smart. I already had about 10 square feet of St Aug along the shady side of the house. I nurtured the grass with water and fertilizer and totally ignored the weeds of prairie grasses and bermuda. Here are before and current pics.

The original grass was under the windows on the addition and along the concrete patio. You can't see it but it was there. Now you can see the line in the foreground where the grass is pretty dense and where there are still some weeds. If you zoom in you can see how deep the grass is against the dog's legs.

My local home depot sells 36 plugs of zoysia, st Augustine, and Bermuda for $54. Will that work since I can just spread the plugs around and wait for them to fill in after 2-3 years?

Any major differences between zoysia and St Augustine for my application? Winters get down to 34 degrees at night but I'm ok letting the lawn go dormant since we're hardly outdoors during the cold season.

I much prefer St Aug to zoysia. I used to live in a neighborhood with many zoysia lawns. They were always on my radar, because it seemed the littlest problem persists throughout the season. Here's one picture.

As you can see the house is amazing, so these people had plenty of resources to deal with the lawn. Still, once the zoysia does this, it's done for the entire season. This lawn was drowned from a week of heavy rain in the spring. That dead spot was apparently not draining properly.

If you get a problem like that with St Augustine, you can fix it in a few weeks and go on.

Your advice has been invaluable. We'll commit to the st Augustine this coming spring. It'll give me the fall and winter to manually remove the sod and artificial turf. Any recs on ways to flatten the soil after sod removal?

The very best way is to hire a tractor (and driver) with a box blade. If it is a traditional SoCal yard, it will take about 30 minutes. Or you can DIY with some effort. Probably the hardest part is to figure out whether you need to remove soil that's already there. I'm going out on a limb here, because I see a lot more (LOT MORE) yards needing to remove soil, but I'm going to suggest you should remove soil. If the soil is higher than the surrounding hardscape, it should be removed down to, more or less, level with a slight crown in the middle for drainage. Once that is done you can deal with high and low spots.

Assuming the grass is gone, then look for low spots to fill with sand. Smooth that off with a long 2x4 board with some weight on it. Or you can drag a piece of wire fencing around. I made a chain link drag with rope, wood, bag of sand (for weight), and fencing. It worked great for a small area. So with the drag you drag that around until it looks perfect. Then spray it all down with a mist of water to encourage the sand to settle without washing it away. Let that dry and fill the new low spots with more sand. Drag, water, and evaluate again. After about 3 cycles of that you should have a relatively perfect surface. Don't walk on that until the grass is down. Sand works better than topsoil for this because topsoil always has little clods in it. Even a 1/4-inch clod will make you scream as it creates a furrow in the sand. You can make it putting-green smooth, which is a great goal. After the sod is down, then use a roller to press the bottom of the sod down onto the surface of the soil/sand. Roots will not grow through the air to reach the ground. Of if it is a small area, you can achieve the same result by walking on every square inch of sod to press it down. Your weight is perfect for this. You might want the sand to be moist/firm when you do this. Dry sand might push around and defeat the purpose of leveling.

If I'm ordering st Augustine plugs (they sell in packs of 36 plugs at home depot), do I just dig a hole and plant the plug after flattening the soil? Can the grass grow evenly from plugs in sand?

My backyard has excessive soil that forms a hill in the middle of the yard with an 8 inch drop off slope, so I've already anticipated needing to remove a lot of soil. The area has good drainage three sides that lead to gutters that drain straight toward the street.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Harmony-St-Augustine-Sod-Plugs-36-Count-Trays-HHStAugTrays/300507753