Howdy!

I moved in to a new-to-me house south of Houston in July. The house was built in the middle of last century and the St Augustine lawn has been established for at least 20 years.

Between moving in and dealing with other moving stuff, the front lawn just fell off of the to-do list. When it started to look a little stressed from the heat and lack of rain I finally turned my attention to the sprinkler system.

Once the sprinkler system was back up I thought things would start looking better, but it didn't happen. Things went from kinda-green with weeds to yellow and brown spots to whole sections of lawn dead. It's so dead that the runners are no longer attached to the ground. You can pick them up like a net draped across the ground.

I was whining to my new neighbor how my lawn looks horrible compared to every other lawn on the street. She told me to talk to my next-door neighbors because they had replaced their lawn last spring due to some disease that killed it.

The next-door neighbors said that they had to replace their lawn due to 'grubs and fungus' and gave me the name of the landscaper who did the work.

Here are some pictures.

You can see the next-door neighbors' lawn in the top right of the Far View pic. This dead area is a square with at least 16 foot sides and is the biggest one. The areas of green in the curve of the flower beds and in the left of the Far View pic is actually dollar weed (I think) with no grass in those areas.

My question boils down to this: "What do I do now?" Is this recoverable? Do I call the landscaper dude and hope for a good deal?

Thanks in advance!

Put down some good weed and feed now and do it again in late February. I think you are too late in the year to do much else now.

What is the best way of killing grubs and fungus? I assume that I have the same stuff that my next-door neighbor did.

Look up Randy lemons lawn schedule and jump in. Be sure to do the fungicide.
It won't look good this winter/early spring but it will recover pretty quick late spring

Looks like a fungus problem to me. Very common this time of year with lower temptures. I would put down some Scott's DiseaseEX. You are getting near the time of year that everything goes dormant so it will be hard to tell if the fungus was stopped. Start again in the spring when everything starts to green up and repeat every 30 days till temptures get past 60 at night. Alternate products for the treatment. If you have been watering the yard on a frequent basis, you have a fungus problem.

Fungus isn't going to kill everything at the roots like that. More than likely some kind of insect damage. Grubs will make everything pull up like carpet like you're describing. Could have been bad chinch bugs and if you're in Houston, sod webworms are another thing you have to deal with.

If the roots are shot I'd pull it up and replace. Most landscaping companies will do it unless you want to tackle it yourself. Pull all the dead up, soften up that dirt underneath, add some top soil if you need to in order to keep things level and lay the sod. Don't apply any kind of pre-emergent if you're planning on re-sodding. It will make for more work down the road.

Thisguy1 said:

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Fungus isn't going to kill everything at the roots like that. More than likely some kind of insect damage. Grubs will make everything pull up like carpet like you're describing. Could have been bad chinch bugs and if you're in Houston, sod webworms are another thing you have to deal with.

If the roots are shot I'd pull it up and replace. Most landscaping companies will do it unless you want to tackle it yourself. Pull all the dead up, soften up that dirt underneath, add some top soil if you need to in order to keep things level and lay the sod. Don't apply any kind of pre-emergent if you're planning on re-sodding. It will make for more work down the road.

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How would you kill the grubs?

Nothing you can really do now. Something with imidacloprid next May/June. Or if you want to do a one time that will give you grub, sod webworm and some chinch bug control you can use Acelepryn, but it's pricey.