Best way to revitalize a completely dead lawn

[AmdEmAll]

You either water it against the restrictions or you have a dead lawn. No other options really.

 

[MrPickins]

1. In the middle of the one of the worst droughts in the recorded history for this area you killed all the ground cover on your yard? 😕 Ever hear of the dust bowl?

2. Don't bother trying to grow anything until spring. As Ronstang mentioned, the grass is all dormant at this time of year, especially with how cool it is right now. You could mess with winter rye, but it'll still require quite a bit of water and will die off in the spring/summer.


On a side note, it seems as though a lot of posters think Texas is a huge desert. We are in a drought, but the Austin area isn't a place where grass isn't "supposed to grow"...

 

[Leros]

1. In the middle of the one of the worst droughts in the recorded history for this area you killed all the ground cover on your yard? 😕 Ever hear of the dust bowl?

2. Don't bother trying to grow anything until spring. As Ronstang mentioned, the grass is all dormant at this time of year, especially with how cool it is right now. You could mess with winter rye, but it'll still require quite a bit of water and will die off in the spring/summer.


On a side note, it seems as though a lot of posters think Texas is a huge desert. We are in a drought, but the Austin area isn't a place where grass isn't "supposed to grow"...

The weeds were spreading and killing the remaining grass, so I was hoping to kill off the weeds to give the grass a chance to spread.

I've maintained lawns two ways in the past.
1) In an area where it rained so much that grass was easy to grow
2) In a dry Texas area where you could water every day and water was incredibly cheap.

Having to maintain a lawn with watering restrictions is something new to me and I've been adapting to it.

 

[Leros]

I think I'm going to just let the lawn lay dormant/dead for now. My lawn is started to get covered with leaves so I can get away with it. Not to mention, other people have stopped watering and their lawns have stopped looking perfect.

When the time comes, I'll lay down some seed and then cover the lawn with soaker hose. I can put the soaker hose on a timer and run it as often as needed to keep the lawn wet enough for the seeds to germinate.

I've never properly seeded a lawn before, so I'm not 100% sure on the method. I think I'm going to rake the existing soil, lay down copious amounts of seed, and cover with a fine layer of new soil. I don't want to remove the existing remnants of grass and top layer of soil, so I'm hoping this method will be good enough.

I'm not entirely sure on the best time to do this. I'm thinking probably late January. That's sort of when it starts to warm up. Bermuda grass seems to take 6 weeks to germinate so I can have a decent lawn coming in when Spring officially rolls around.

Thoughts on my method?

 

[0roo0roo]

probably best to find some company to design some low water landscaping for ya, long term solution is cheaper and less of a headache ...

 

[SagaLore]

Buy a large bag of dutch clover, and a cheap bag of ryegrass. You're going to have to loosen the soil first.