Our lawn was in need of care when we bought our house a year ago but after a few months of major drought/high heat/water restrictions this year in San Antonio, our lawn is in bad shape and I do not know where to even start on repairing it. Most of it is now brown with lots of huge bare spots. We have a good size back yard and front yard and replacing it all with sod would be something we could not afford.
It seems we have a mixture of types of grasses but a good part of it is St Augustine I believe.
[img]https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h100/flourdude/IMG_0598.jpg[/img]
Most of it is brown in our back yard with big bare spots where it gets more sun
[img]https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h100/flourdude/IMG_0612.jpg[/img][img]https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h100/flourdude/IMG_0611.jpg[/img]
but in our front yard it is greener under the oak tree but spots are bare where there is more sun
[img]https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h100/flourdude/IMG_0601.jpg[/img][img]https://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h100/flourdude/IMG_0600.jpg[/img]
The questions I have are:
1. If this is St Augustine, why does it seem to grow in more shadier areas? I thought it preferred full sun or am I wrong?
2. I know St. Augustine normally spreads, how can I promote it to spread out to these bare areas?
3. Since we are coming into fall season (but it is still very hot and still little rain) am I limited on what I can do at this point to start the repair process?
4. With the areas that contain non St Augustine grass should I get rid of the grass that is there?
5. Is there another type of grass seed that I can mix with the existing St Augustine that would look similar and would be easier to fill in the big bare areas? Resoding would be very expensive with the size of our yard.
Thanks for your help and suggestions in advance.