MSMA will take care of crabgrass while leaving Bermuda intact, maybe burn it a little if you mix it too heavy. That’s what I’m doing today
They tore up my parents sod at their lake house. At night we stayed up and cut the flood lights on and armadillos would be everywhere digging to eat the army worms. Pretty fun to shoot with the .22 but the lawn was destroyed
Anyone had sod laid recently? Trying to ball Park some cost. Put down fescue last fall and it looked amazing then brunt to shit in early spring. Didn't matter how much I watered it. I think I over estimated how much sun my yard gets. So I'm either going to till it then replant Bermuda or do Zoysia sod. It was like 800 for top dressing/seed, but I've read it's hard to get full coverage from seed in year one. A pallet is about 500 for I think 500 Sq ft, what's the labor?
How often do you guys power rake? I usually get my lawn aerated then overseed in the fall, but was considering power raking. I’ve also read that some advise not to do that unless it’s really bad, since it can tear up your yard.
If you have the money obviously sod will give you the best most immediate results but if you seed properly and maintain properly you can have full coverage in first year.
Yeah, meant to say power rake/dethatch but my autocorrect was pissing me off lol Grass is mostly fescue with some bluegrass mixed in.
Bermuda grass. I bought the greenwork based on a recommendation from silver cymbal from YT. Did it once and it was beautiful to look at. Mounds of thatch. Bagged all the thatch, and my grass responded by waking up. Then I saw a video from doc that basically said don’t do it on runner like grasses. Bermuda are runners based (ryzone) and tears up the runners. Didn’t negatively affect me, but could just be a waste of money. Your call.
Dethatching and verticutting are some of the best cultural practices you can do for warm season grasses. Do it only when growing vigorously or right at green up. Never heading into dormancy. As for sod cost, material only, you’re probably looking around .50-.60 per sq ft. for a good cultivar hybrid Bermuda or Zoysia. I’d hire out some backs to lay it myself.
Similar but different, but Bermuda seems to recover from everything. As long as you’re doing it once and not weekly, what’s the harm?
Looks like I have another full lawn renovation coming up. Just bought a new house with a pretty big yard and shit for grass. Here's some pics. So my current plan is to take out this group of trees here. It's pines and one oak, I hate to cut an oak down but if I do get rid of this group then most of the front yard gets pretty full sun. If I do that then I think I'll kill off what is there next year and seed with compadre zoysia. I'm very open to other suggestions but I have experience with zenith and compadre so it's what I know. My front yard at my current house is zenith and back yard is compadre. My back yard kicks the shit out of my front yard. It's very healthy and full and I love the dark green that it has compared to the much lighter green the zenith has. New house the back yard is north side so tons of shade so I was going to go with fescue back there. Have my inspection in a couple hours and I noticed some valve covers and a rain bird controller when I went and looked at the house so very interested to see what the condition of the irrigation system is.
Nice crib. I'd definitely support whacking those trees. If that'll bring in full sun, could consider a hybrid Bermuda (Lat 36, TifGrand, Tahoma 31). That said, I am personally more of a Zoysia guy. I'd take a look at Palisades and Zeon before making your final determination. As the saying goes - if you want a yard, install sod, if you want a project, seed it. Are you irrigated? If so, seeding will be easier - but still a chore IMO.
Appreciate the input. House should have irrigation, I will find out today at my inspection. My current house is probably 80% from seed so I understand the difficulties. With that said, this yard is probably 3X as big but with a bunch of renovations going on inside I don't know if I'm willing to drop all that money on sod. Plus I like being able to say that I did that all on my own.
Yep, I'm with you there - been in that same boat. If you have irrigation, your chances for success will increase dramatically - especially as your start to grow your sq. footage.
It's been raining nonstop for like a week. My entire house smells like milorganite from my dogs. This is fine.
I'm just saying, when I moved into my house the oaks were all so over grown and hanging low I couldn't run the riding mower without ducking. Some places I couldn't duck low enough. The yard was also in terrible shape After figuring out/fixing the sprinklers I got the st augustine starting to looking better Then I had a tree guy come in and raise the canopies on all the oaks and they climbed all through there cutting all the little sucker branches with machetes, and damn did the grass really take off after that.
Another issue I have with my Oaks out front is fighting for nutrition around the tree and root zone. It is the worst portion of my yard between the shade and the roots.
Ditto. Here was my chart of quotes right after we purchased. Big sticker shock on sod and just somewhat expensive on irrigation, imo. Also ditto. The 1st thing after buying was have a crew work to trim/shape the tree for the express benefit of the grass. With terrible turf and no irrigation. I chose to do it myself. Currently paying off. First pic is right after closing, essentially the starting point. Though anything green you see in Feb is weeds.
But I'm tired of being the sucker to move the hoses to water upwards of 10k of grass. Time to pony up for sprinklers. Having not spent $6-14k on sod alone, it is much easier to expend.
Was just at the house for 3 hours with inspector looking through everything. Good news is there is some kind of irrigation system there. Found a rainbird controller in the garage, a few valve boxes, and a couple sprinkler heads. System was turned off so didn't want to fuck with it since I don't own the house yet but at least there is something to work with there. Bad news is I don't think I can keep that oak. That main section of the yard is directly north of the tree and it will always block out a ton of the sun no matter how much trimming I do. I have a few other oaks and hardwoods on the property so not the end of the world but I'll be sad when I cut it down.
Ugh…. Just mowed and was enjoying a cold beverage in the shop when I noticed a shit ton of worms coming off the deck of my mower. really frustrating because this is the best my yard has looked since we moved in.
Acelepryn is best for long lasting control but it’s pricey. Bifen will knock them down but they’ll come back
I just got Bifenthrin. Going to mow it down this afternoon and spray in the morning. my very back yard is basically lost, but the immediate backyard and front haven’t been impacted yet.
Spray it. Bifenthrin stopped/killed mine by the end of the day. Grass is already coming back, Bermuda is damn resilient
Have an area of my backyard that stays pretty wet. I live on a hill and it flattens off and water runs down the hill and just sits. It’s been a rainy summer and the grass is starting to get pretty brown in that area. I’ve put some diseaseEX in the affected area but it seems to be just getting worse. Any advice?
Your not going to like this answer, but sounds like a consistent problem area so you need to get that water out of there, probably some kind of french drain.
Trying this. I’m overrun by nutsedge. It was new sod this past winter. Midwest shade mix, but I’m in a new development with zero shade cover, so we had to soak it daily to keep it alive. Did it kill the nutsedge completely, or did it re-emerge? My plan is to plug aerate and overseed with full sun seed, which stood up really well where I used it to patch this summer.
It killed it really well. It re-emerged the following year due to other circumstances, can’t blame it on the tenacity.
Check to see if it is labeled for your grass type but Certainty and Dismiss work excellent for nutsedge as a post emergent in warm weather grasses.
I have had good luck with Sedgehammer and T-Zone. I bought the T Zone for some Creeping Charlie/clovers that nothing else would kill, but I noticed the package said it would kill Nutsedge so I tried it on that as well (since it was all in a similar spot). Also, last year before I could get Sedgehammer I bought some type of spray at Home Depot for like 7.99 it actually worked to kill it off in about a day. Havent found it since.
Overseeded this morning with 90/10 blend of fescue/bluegrass. Probably should have bought like 5lbs more than I did, but at least I got my entire front yard covered and the major areas in the back I wanted to get more sun resistant grass. Couldn’t get anyone out to aerate before, hopefully that doesn’t backfire.
Put some nitrogen down last week, must have went a little heavy in one spot because I got a few small patches where it fried. Kind of surprised because I’ve been watering my grass a ton the past week to get the seed going. It was randomly like 100 degrees a few days this weekend though which I think was what really did me in. Guess I’ll see how it recovers and plan on seeding it next spring. Was so annoyed with myself.