Ehh I like my bermuda. Maybe we should switch to synthetic turf.

"Ehh I like my bermuda"

Good. Better hope it stays that way since you can't get rid of it no matter how hard you try.

You'll never get rid of it just spraying it Quirky. I've tried that on a few little patches in my back yard. Never gets rid of it. Sick yes, gone, no.

Presuming you don't have to fight off an underground invasion from a neighbor, you can get rid of virtually all of it like I did in a side yard. Do a search on me and bermuda posts. But its a real job and takes some consistent follow up.

ROFL!

Love it! One very tiny spill of Roundup killed a hand-sized patch of KBG in my lawn (and then Dumb Idiot here stepped on the aforementioned spill and had footprint marks for another five feet).

I think seven apps of Roundup would kill me. Well, at least we know what'll grow after chemical warfare.

"Well, at least we know what'll grow after chemical warfare."

Ha. That's about right, Bermuda grass and chiggers.

A radical solution for someone like me who has lost patience with this is I think I'm just going to shovel out about 36 sf of soil 12" deep every night after dinner for hte next 100 days. That should solve my compacted clay problem. I might dig a trench at the property line and install aluminum panels underground. Ah this is going to be messy. I better get crackin.

I think I'm just going to shovel out about 36 sf of soil 12" deep every night after dinner for hte next 100 days. That should solve my compacted clay problem.

Thats the spirit Quirky. If you think the Berumuda is agressive, tuff, and grows good in poor soil, just wait until you put down some good sandy loam. :>)

kentucky blue grass and red fescue here love it

Well, we have to live with our environment, so I guess that also means co-existing with our little patches of bermuda and applying the annual dosage of RU. It could be worse I suppose, but I'm not going there.

As if to mock me, I found two little runners of bermuda growing out over the drive way on that fescue yard I was "braggin" about yesterday. Or maybe I should say 99.999 percent fescue. And, as we all know, .001 percent is all the start bermuda needs!

Sigh. The battle lives.

Fescue v. bermuda year six

{{gwi:96981}}

{{gwi:99624}}

Mostly winning the war, but, as mentioned above, its never quite over with that stuff. ha.

Is it just sprouting up from DNA information in the roots?
In other words, can you slice off the sod layer with a sod cutter but leave the roots and it will sprout new leaves?

I thought about covering the whole yard with tarps and starving of sun and water but from the looks of things it doesn't need either of those to survive. It doesn't seem to have any problem being dormant for a year and it will just come back next year.

Quirky there is one way to get rid of it, but it requires a lot of work and being without a lawn this summer. Solarization. I assume you know what I mean so I wonÂt go into details.

If any of your neighbors have Bermuda, you will never be completely rid of it. If anyone in your entire subdivision has Bermuda, you will never be completely rid of it. Shoot, if Bermuda is growing anywhere in your entire city, you will never be completely rid of it.

Bermuda, cockroaches, death and taxes.

Carla in Rowlett

rcnaylor I tried to find your threads when way back when but not coming up in a search.
I thought about solarization but I really didn't think it would work on bermuda. Is that what you did?
And carla youre right I guess it's bothering me because I don't believe we should cultivate plants that can't be killed. This stuff is akin to kudzu.

QQ - You had a top notch bermuda lawn, that was dormant for half the year. Ever since you were looking for the single miracle grass that looked great year round, that I'm not sure exists anywhere.

Another way to look at it is that you have the luxury of living in an area that you can have both a good warm climate grass (bermuda) and cool weather grass (bent, kbg, etc.).
Why not experiment with say bermuda in the summer and bent in the winter? I bet you could have a great looking lawn 99% of the time, which is far better than anywhere else in the country.

It looks like we posted about simultaneously. The answer is in my last reply. (I don't believe we should cultivate plants that we cannot kill) Bermuda is permanent. It's forever. I don't like making commitments like that. Use of bermuda may be a nice lawn but it's irresponsible to use it and frankly it's irresponsible to grow and sell it. There's grass that's greener for more of the year and is lower maintenance and is not a noxious weed, so I'll use that instead.

QQ-

You finally saw the light!

Funny... you used to love bermuda a couple years ago... Now, you hate it. :)

I'm stuck with bermuda in several spots. The solution? Plant more trees.

QQ, please take this in the fun spirit I intend it to be. I for the life of me cannot understand your obsession with Bermuda or why on earth you would want a green lawn all year long to slave and work on. You are never going to rid yourself of Bermuda, so why fight it? Either move north and become a Yankee, or adapt to southern exposure. Atlanta is in the south.

If you really want a green lawn all year long here is my advice. Sod or seed with a quality Bermuda with good cold weather tolerance. In fall over-seed with Rye, then in March hit the rye with Atrazine to kill it off, then fertilize the crap out of the Bermuda to wake it up and get going strong for spring summer, and fall. Start cycle over again.

Then you can slave all year long over a lawn. I cannot imagine why, I would rather be doing other things during the holidays.

Sorry the posts fell off the bottom Quirky. In simple terms here is what I did. About a month before prime seeding weather I sprayed the bermuda once a week for about three straight weeks with RU. After it is sprayed remember you want to keep the stuff trying to grow, so once the spray has had time to be soaked up by the bermuda, water it if necessary. Then, after four weeks (the last week is for the last spray to have time to go into the roots) bring in a sod cutter. Set it pretty deep (as deep as your back and ability to haul off the sod will allow). Then, of course, haul off the bermuda "sod". I wound up hiring a front end loader and dump truck after my family mutineed on me and my pickup.

Plant your fescue seed, fertilize, water, etc. Presuming you get a good, thick crop of fescue going, the next year mow it high so it can shade out the bermuda. Be on the look out for sprigs of bermuda cropping up and physically dig out the (hopefully) few that pop up by hand as deep as you can get to the root. Overseed for at least a couple of years to keep the fescue good and thick.

As referenced above, what can eventually happen is that the stuff sneaks back in below the fescue for the most part a little at a time so you don't see it, then, if there is a hot dry time that saps the fescue, it out comptes the fescue and becomes visible again.

But, seriously, anyone looking at my fescue yard would not have seen any bermuda 99 percent of the time the last 5 years. in the last 3 years or so I've only seen two spots where it could be found/seen at all. So, you can get rid of (not te-totally and forever, but for all practical purposes) bermuda in a fescue yard if you want to really get after it and stay after it.

Worth the effort? To each lawn whacko his own.

Tee-dub, Tif sport has a high quality appearance when professionally managed, late November to Mid april it's dormant that's about as good as it's going to get with bermuda. But it's more the principle for me than anything else. I'm not striving for year round color, 8-9 months of it is satisfactory. I don't have any desire to move north although I do tend to favor northern gardens, I'm not trying to grow a species ill adapted to my climate. I'm trying to grow a species that is actually very well adapted to the climate, low cost , low maintenance, high quality performance. Maybe for your climate bermuda is as good as it gets and I'm sorry to hear that.

My next attempt at the back yard will not include KBG and it will not include TTTF. What I'm planting there is going to be a surprise. I'll give you a hint though. The rabbits are going to go hungry this winter.

rcnaylor, thanks for reposting what you did. I did do a similar process with the roundup. I never had good results with roundup to tell you the truth. Even on other weeds. I got a glypohsate w/diquat product that I plan to try. Youre right though whenever it rained the bermuda would come back.

How long did you have bermuda there before you removed it? Mine was only there about two years (now 3). I have planting areas bordering most of the yard and they get 6" of roundup no-grow buffer. The areas without planting beds have 12" of a no-grow buffer that I continually spray.

Tifsport? While I agree it is a very high quality grass, not quite what I had in mind with my suggestion. It is great for greens and tee boxes, it is not something I would reccomend for home gamers. Beside I doubt you could afford it.

Yes I know Atlanta can go either cool season or warm season grass. The reason is the tree density. Heck you can't find the darn city for the trees. However I suspect you don't have many trees as over the past year or so you have had Bermuda and now trying Bent. So that tells me you have full sun and need to look at warm season grass, then over seed if you want year long green. Otherwise I think you are fighting a loosing battle with any of the cool season stuff.

Good Luck

TW

To answer your question Quirky, I can't say for sure. The stuff was here when we moved in in the summer of 2000. We bought it from friends who had done nothing to the yard and lived in the house for three years before they sold to us. I'd guess it had been here for a number of years (10, 15?).

To add to my bermuda grass experience for the possible benefit of whoever might be reading, I also had probably 500 square feet in my front yard that had bermuda in it. I gave it basically the same treatment (multiple RU, sodcutter,but there I layed KBG sod). I had to pull a few sprigs the next year, but have had zero problem with bermuda coming back in it. I think it is mostly because of what Texas Weed mentions. There are more trees there, so more shade and the KBG just out competes the bermuda more easily there.

And, fwiw, I have a neighbor across the street that has an area that he lets go to seed with bermuda. Some of the bermuda in my fescue yard could be coming from over there. Or maybe the devil just drops by and plants his favorite grass occaisionally. ;)

Or maybe the devil just drops by and plants his favorite grass occaisionally.

LOL

TeeDub, what variety did you have in mind?

I don't notice shade as being that big a problem for bermuda to tell you the truth. There are many wooded home sites that I walk by with my dogs on a daily basis and they're growing bermuda. What I've noticed is early on in the season it will grow fine, at the peak of the summer dry spell it will even look better having a little relief from the sun. But eventually at the end of the summer it really thins out and loses color leading people to think it's dead.
Only problem is that it isn't dead. It just comes back the following year and repeats this cycle.

The only time I see bare spots in shade is when that shade is directly beneath a maple or leyland cypress or something like that with surface roots that suck the life out everything you plant near it.

Have you noticed something that I don't about shade?

I think with afternoon shade, as simple as having a 2 story house or a line of tall trees on the west side of the property you can grow anything here provided it will tolerate the moisture level.