Patience and renovating a bermuda lawn

There are several key components when it comes to paying for someone to do work for you.

1. education/experience/skill
2. time/labor
3. materials

The cost of any job will factor those components in proportionately to arrive at a dollar value for which you will pay to have the work completed. So if you have no idea how to change the timing belt in your car, you are basically either paying for your ignorance or for the convenience to have someone else do the work

When I moved into my new house, the Bermuda sod was put down during a dry and hot late August. Seeing how the other houses were built, I know that our lawn started as a weed infested lot which was cleared and leveled with a bulldozer.  A thin layer of topsoil was spread before a mostly dead sod (due to sitting outside for a few days in the sun) was laid down and a hose dragged around to get some water sprinkled.

We moved in late September and I couldn't find my hoses while I unpacked.  I was lucky to only have 1/4 of my lot's lawn completely die off and I incorrectly figured it was dormant Bermuda and would come back after the winter. Grass won't go dormant unless it's had a chance to get established.

The first spring saw some bermuda come back but lots of weeds from the old vacant lot came in too including tall fescue and johnson grass as well as all the other lawn weeds such as sorrel, dendelion, crabgrass, henbit, etc etc.

I tried keeping the lawn mowed but the tall fescue and johnson grass had a very fast growth rate and the lawn looked lumpy and weedy just a day after mowing. Pre-emergent herbicides didn't seem to do anything but I hated to think how bad it might be without using it. I managed to put some down too early in the first spring and probably too early in the first fall.  Our first full year in the house proved to be a learning experience for my lawn care abilities.

At the end of year 1, my wife called around looking for quotes on a lawn renovation and threatened to rip out all the grass and put down some other kind of ground cover.  Not willing to pay for the work as well as not willing to be the non-conformist in the neighborhood, I promised I could fix the lawn but I would need until the next spring to show the results since I was already trying all kinds of products to get the lawn in shape, I figured I had a head start.

2-4,d post emergent weed killer was pretty effective but it seemed like I needed to spray on a weekly basis for good results.  At some point during the first year of trying to get my lawn in shape (note: that the irony is not lost that I'm pro bio-diversity yet I'm trying to cultivate a mono-culture lawn) I learned that glyphosate is the most important tool in mono-culture lawn care and the key was to wait for the Bermuda to go dormant after several killing frosts in the late fall.  This small bit of information was given to me by a neighbor who is a retired lawn maintenance business owner and then again in the Master Gardener classes I took early in year 2.

Waiting as long as possible for the bermuda to turn completely yellow, I got a good warm spell above 50 degrees and sprayed anything in the lawn that was still green with glyphosate.  I waited a few weeks and repeated the application at the next available warm spell during the early winter. (NOTE: killing the unwanted plants in the beginning of winter will invite weed seeds to germinate all winter long).  Roundup only works at temperatures above 50 degrees so long range weather forecasting is helpful in planning the treatments.

The roundup/glysphosate application succesfully killed off the tall fescue and whatever weeds I had at the end of last year as well as a few of my seedling trees thanks to the fierce winds.  This year (#3), the Bermuda is spreading but so is the Johnson grass and other misc weeds.  Despite 2 pre-emergent applications, I think subsequent heavy rains effectively diluted any benefit I might have achieved.

Trying to jumpstart the spreading of bermuda into the many barespots I created with the roundup/glyphosate, I waited patiently for bermuda sod to get stocked at the local big box store (2 trips a day to check on inventory for 2 weeks) and purchased 2 $9 rolls at approximately 1ft X4ft strips and cut them into 6 inch squares to stick in the middle of some of the larger bare spots just before we got a solid week of rain to help the sod root nicely.

The square patches are spreading nicely and just a few more weeks before most of the larger patches are more grass than bare dirt.

End of Year 1

most green lawn when everyone else's is brown

Beginning of Year 2

bare spots left by killing off tall fescue last year

So far I've probably spent less than $100 for the lawn renovation on chemicals, sod and compost which is fraction of what the lawn renovation companies wanted to charge.  I'm ahead of the game.

With the Bermuda spreading nicely, it's time to focus my attention on the Johnson Grass.