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utahutah_gw

Lawn Renovation Project- Help!

UtahUtah
10 years ago

Hello everybody.

This is my first time on this forum, or any forum for that matter. As I have looked for solutions to my problems I have often been pointed to this website so I thought I would give it a try.

Here is my dilemma- My wife and I purchased our home in Northern Utah last November. When spring rolled around I began to notice patches of prickly grass that started popping up taller than my normal grass (KBG). I tried pulling some of it out and found that it was attached to a vine that ran beneath the surface. At first I didnâÂÂt think it was a big deal but the more the weather warmed up, the worse it got. It was popping up everywhere.

I decided to have a professional come out and he informed me that it was Bermuda Grass. His advice was simple- âÂÂyou need to make peace with it or start overâÂÂ. I decided to start over.

For the remainder of the summer we applied Killzall every couple of weeks (4-5 total applications). We went all the way into fall before the Bermuda finally stopped popping up. That stuff is nasty resilient! Hopefully we got it all and it wasnâÂÂt just the cool weather that caused it to go dormant. It was pretty minimal for the last couple applications.

After the first application ran its course, I set the lawnmower to the lowest setting and scalped the entire yard. After the last application I rented a power-rake and raked the whole yard as well. We were able to remove a lot of dead grass but a lot still remains.

So here I am, waiting for winter to end and wondering how best to proceed come spring.

Help me forum! Everybody I talk to has a different idea and most of them seem to be guesses at best. We want to lay sod (KBG) this spring.

What I really want to know is- Can I continue to rake out the dead grass until there is semi-decent soil contact or does the dead grass need to be completely removed? I donâÂÂt have the $/resources to take the sod-cutter approach. Do I need to bring in dirt? Should I till? I was kind of hoping I could just lay the new sod on top of the dead, thinned out sod. Is this a possibility?

Thank you in advance for your knowledge!

This post was edited by UtahUtah on Tue, Jan 14, 14 at 19:09

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