Okay, 1. I did not know HD had a forum 2. The guy who helped you there knows not what he's talking about. Baking soda will kill crabgrass in St Aug and will leave the St Aug alive (somewhat set back). Why? Because crabgrass has no tolerance for salt and St Aug has so much tolerance for salt it grows out across the beach into the ocean. There is a video on YouTube showing the effect of baking soda day by day. Search for St Augustine, baking soda, and crabgrass. Only water 2x per day if you are trying to sprout the seeds. The helpful store associate made it sound like you should water 2x per day until fall. But wait on the baking soda treatment. I don't see any crabgrass in those pictures. I see plenty of St Augustine. The dense network of stems you removed was your lawn. A St Augustine lawn. It may have been dead, but that was what was once your lawn. That was a lot of work I'll bet. It looks like all you need is water and fertilizer to make this a real lawn again. I was going to ask you where you were in Central Texas but at this time of year it doesn't matter. It is too hot for chemical fertilizer. Your only hope to spruce up the lawn is organic fertilizer. In the hot sun organic will not burn the grass like a chemical fert will. And organic fert will not interfere with previously applied apps of chemicals. The organic fertilizer I really like is alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) because almost anyone can find it at a nearby feed store. Apply at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet and in 3 weeks you will see much better color and vigor in your lawn. You can continue to use alfalfa as much as you like all summer and resume chemicals after Labor Day. After you get over the bermuda seed sprouting issues, then when you water, apply deeply but not very often. Deeply means an inch and not very often means about once a week at this time of year in south and central Texas. You should measure the output of your sprinkler system to know how long it takes to collect an inch. Use a cat food or tuna can and see how long it takes to fill it. My sprinkler takes 8 - 16 hours depending on how I have it set up. A friend can get a full inch in 20 minutes. Every system is different. You have to measure your own. If, when you water, you get runoff, stop watering immediately and let the water soak in for 15 minutes. Then resume watering. If it runs off again, stop and repeat after 15 minutes. Keep going though. It needs to happen all at one time. The worst thing you can do to any lawn is water twice a day every day for a short time.

Part of the problem with crabgrass in bermuda is they both love the same conditions. The advantage you have is in withholding moisture, especially in the spring. The crabgrass will die at first frost. The bermuda will slow down and go dormant about the same time. No advantage yet. Whatever you do, do not over seed with rye grass to keep your lawn green over the winter. There are several reasons for this, but one is so you can get the earliest green up of the bermuda possible. You want every sun ray to hit the grass and bring it out of dormancy. Over the winter you should be watering once per month. When the temps rise into the 70s, you can move to once every 3 weeks. Temps in the 80s you can go to once every 2 weeks. Above ninety and go to weekly watering. Crabgrass needs continual moisture to germinate. If you withhold moisture, the soil will be dry most of the time and the crabgrass seed will not germinate. If you have a very dense turf, the crabgrass will not move in.

I'm a pretty experienced gardener, and I still haven't found a good solution to your problem, if what you have is bermuda grass. It will grow under most border edgings, or sneak thru where the edgings overlap or crack, or creep over the top when you're not looking. I really think bermuda ought to be an honorary bamboo! When forced to put a bed in where bermuda exists, what I usually do is plant an 18 inch swatch of annuals along the edge of the bed. Then when I take them out in the fall, I meticulously dig out every bit of bermuda that escaped my control efforts, so next summer I start with a clean bed again. It's a pain, but it's the only thing I've found that works, at least for a while. Eventually a piece gets overlooked, and the bermuda gets a foothold, and the whole bed needs to be dug up, the bermuda blasted into oblivion by roundup, and it's time to start the whole struggle over again. I'd love to plant a bed in my front yard between my neighbor and myself, but I haven't bothered because the thought of coping with the bermuda stops me, I have too much yardwork already to start another epic bermuda battle at my age. Sue

Thank you for the pictures. You can't imagine how much better that is than our collective imaginations. You are not overthinking this. You are thinking it through properly. It's just a lot to put down all at once, but I thank you for going to the trouble and not scattering it all over the place. Your soil is poor and thin not because of anything that has been done to it, but because you have not been using organic fertilizer at least once a year. There is a FAQ on organic lawn care in the GW Organic Gardening Forum. Check that out for a basic primer on the new approach to inexpensive organic lawn care. If you want to improve your soil very quickly, go straight organic and go often. This year rather than using corn (too expensive) I have been using alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow). When I wrote the Organic Lawn Care FAQ, corn was selling for $3 per bag. This year is was $15-20 per bag while alfalfa was "only" $12 per bag. Alfalfa is a better fertilizer than corn anyway, so it's a much better deal. I've been on these forums for 10 years. There are two approaches to getting rid of creeping charlie that work. One is to dig up the top six inches of every square inch of the yard and pull out all the roots. Start in one corner and go as far as you can. When you come back, start AGAIN in the SAME CORNER and repeat because you will have missed some. At least the second time it goes much faster. Continue doing and redoing the area until you have nothing but soil. Or the other approach that works is to use non-organic chemicals. I will not address that approach in this forum because this is an organic forum and because the people here are not well versed in the use of the chemicals. If you decide to use something like RoundUp, check into a lawn forum where the members know how to use it. The same goes for bermuda. You can get rid of them, though. Sand is not a problem in the soil. In fact I prefer sand to anything else when I'm leveling or filling in low areas. If that was your jar test I just commented on, you have mostly sand anyway. Good news there is that sand does not compact like other soils do. Bad news is that sand does not develop a structure like other soils do. Tree work will not involve equipment. You will get a crew of men who climb trees like monkeys and drag stuff to the front where the equipment is. Drainage needs to be addressed. You'll need an on site landscaper to fix that for you. For your small lot he might use a tractor with a tool called a box blade or he might just use a group of labor guys. The tractor would be done in 10 minutes. Dog urine is only a problem when the basic soil is not fertilized. If you had adequate fertilizer down, dog urine becomes instant fertilizer. When you don't have the biology right, then that instant fertilizer burns the roots. If you are interested in an alternative turf grass, look into the wheatgrasses that might do well in your area. They are normally considered a prairie grass, but when you sow the seed like a lawn and mow it a few times, it looks like one of the best lawns you'll find. Here is a picture of a wheatgrass lawn in Utah. He's in a high desert area and waters his lawn beginning in late May or June. Mowing is monthly. His is a mix of wheatgrasses, blue grama, and strawberry clover. When seeding you might try doing half the yard at a time. At the bottom of your steps you need a landing. It can be a easy as several inches of shredded tree mulch or it could be more formal like a wooden landing or even stone.