3. Why are you waiting until week 2-4?

TifSport is a great grass as it is very fine semi-dwarf texture custom designed for golf fairways and sports fields. When was the last time you ever seen a golf fairway, baseball, or football field with 1-inch grass? I hoped you answered never because that is way too high for TifSport. You can get away with that with Tifway, but not TifSport. I hope you have a reel mower and keep it around 1/2-inch.

The answer to your question is you start mowing it as soon as it needs mowed. Just make sure the ground is not soggy and mushy so your feet and mower wheels do not sink in.

4. For fertilizer I hope you put a good starter fertilizer down already when it was laid like 10-10-10. If not get it done now as it will set the roots. After that about 4 weeks just use nitrogen.

5. Expect weeds, you will get them the first season. Come around August you can spot treat if you wish with post emergence. For now use your back and hands to pull them. After summer heat breaks you can start with premergence program. Come winter after you are certain the Bermuda is dormant, I do mean dormant not a tinge of green, you can spot spray anything green with RU.

7. Wait until next year after the grass has greened up and it gets good and warm so the grass is actively growing. With that said assuming the area was properly prepared you shouldn't need to aerate next spring. Leveling is another issue which can be done when aerating.

6. Forget cinch bugs with Bermuda. If you have SA you have cinch bugs. If you do not have SA, you do not have cinch bugs.

For grubs use any treatment you are comfortable with either chemical, or organic like nematodes and BT.

3. No idea. Guess I was afraid of damaging the grass. Duly noted. The reason for 1" is that my Fiskars reel mower only goes down to 1" minimum heIght. Should I ditch it?

4. On my way to find some 10-10-10!

On the issue of leveling I think I'm good overall in that respect. I do have a few areas of indention like someone set a bowling ball on the sod and it sank in several inches. I've heard both topsoil and sand being used to fill these areas in. Any opinion on which works best?

Thanks!

You can use either sand or top soil. If using sand use a coarse builders sand. You do not want to use any type of river or polished fine grained sand. Something coarse and angular so it does not pack down, and cuts into existing soil.. You can even use what is called PRO-MIX a 50/50 by volume of Peat (not peat moss) and coarse sand works great. PRo-MIX is what golf course putting greens are made of.

As for cutting height I really hate to answer, because it requires a lot of work At 1-inch you are committing to mowing 2 times a week. Go to 1/2nch and you mow every other day. See where this conversation is going?

TifSport is a high end grass that demands high input maintenance. It will not die if you keep it tall, but it will never be what it was meant to be. It was developed for sports and high end lawns.

So I thought I'd post an update on my lawn after receiving some great help and knowledge from you guys (especially Texas-Weed). This is exactly 3 months after installation. I'm following the bermuda bible and giving it plenty of water as well as using my Fiskars momentum reel mower at the second to lowest setting at a frequency of every third day. Ive also been applying Lesco high nitrogen fertilizer every four weeks (for now). Watering is done twice a week (unless there's been significant precipitation). Make no mistake, it's a lot of work and quite time consuming but worth every second. Now if I could only afford a sprinkler system!

Oh my!

That color is ridiculous! That's beautiful!

Thanks for posting the pics , that looks excellent
the color is outstanding and looks very thick!
do you have any close up pics of the blades, I am just curious

Thanks guys! Here's the best I could get (Iphone camera).

That looks very nice. Your hard work and effort has paid off. That is "Yard of the Month" material right there!

Ha! Found this google image of what the yard looked like when I bought the house. Oh and please email my HOA about the yard of the month. Maybe I'll get a break from those damned dues!

Thanks for the close ups,

a great transformation !

Yes that looks great!! Nice work.

See that tree in the middle of the yard...the one that has a 4x larger shadow in the after picture than in the before picture - that tree. That tree is going to be a headache for bermuda. In fact shade is such an issue that you might reconsider who parks the car on which side of the driveway. The big black billboard SUV is hogging the afternoon light from the adjacent grass.

Let me guess, it is a Bradford Pear tree right?

Nope, it's a live oak.

Aaaaarrrrrggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

All that work wasted. Well, you'll have a few good years of bermuda before you have to convert to St Augustine.

I have three remaining live oaks in my front yard in San Antonio and nine in my yard in George West. Knowing what I know now, I'd say they put yours a little close to the driveway and to the house. You won't have any serious problems, but the tree will end up with a root system that is all on the side of the tree away from the driveway and house.

Other than that, I LOVE my live oaks. My biggest one is about 60 feet across - another reason to put it out away from the house. But that is after 30 years of growing.

Funny, I don't feel like I wasted any work.

This year you will likely be fine. When the bermuda comes out of dormancy next spring, the grass in the shade of the oak will not come out. That opens up all that area to some bad boy weeds. Among the weeds to watch for are clover, black medic (looks like clover), dichondra, and horse herb. They are innocuous looking at first, but become prolific. As they spread quickly into the shade-weakened bermuda, they will continue to spread into the dense bermuda shading it out as it goes. By the judicious use of Weed-B-Gone next spring, you can hold off the weeds until the rest of the bermuda comes out. Worst case is if you get crabgrass started in there, but that is unlikely because it is a sun loving plant, too. Dallis grass is another possibility. It has no trouble on the fringe of shade and sun.

One thing that we're seeing happen is owners get anxious for their bermuda to come out in the spring. Just about the time the grass is starting to pop, they will drop bermuda seed. Or if they waited long enough to see it pop, they will see a weak spot (like I'm expecting in yours) in a hybrid bermuda and toss some bermuda seed in to build it up. The problem with that is the seeded varieties of bermuda are all common bermuda and not nearly the same quality of grass as the hybrid Tiff grasses. Even the Tif 419 variety of hybrid is not the same quality as your sports model bermuda.

In the long run, the only turf grass that will survive under a southern live oak tree is St Augustine.