What type of grass for shade (in bermuda-centipede)and a few more

9 years ago

Hey all, I've done a ton of research and recently overseeded my sad centipede lawn with bermuda and I am very happy. The goal is to overseed with bermuda again and hopefully eventually have the centipede get crowded out. I chose to over seed because I did not have the time to fully tear up the old lawn and redo it all. It has turned out well even tho I started a bit late in the year....
Lawn is high traffic (dogs that play all day) and mostly full sun, and I'm in coastal nc.

I do have a few questions before I overseed the last section...

1- areas around my back porch are in the shade about 1/2 to 2/3 of the day... If I am going for a fine, low cut grass to complement the bermuda what should I use in this area? Or will bermuda be ok with that much shade?

2 - since I started late, I didn't have time to use a pre emergent and still overseed. Because of this, I had quite a bit of weeds growing in the areas I already overseeded and have been hand pulling to control but I've got 12,000 sq feet of lawn and it gets to be a pain. Is there anything I can use when I overseed this last area to avoid the weeds without negatively affecting germination.

3 - I have a drainage ditch in the front yard that has poor drainage, the soil is soft and black but always spongy and nothing but weeds and small amounts of grass ever grow there.... Is there any type of grass that looks good with bermuda that will grow here or do I have to look at other options? Some people have put down river rock in their ditches in my area, but my wife isn't a fan of the look...

4- what is this weed? It is my primary weed problem and I thought it was crab grass but after looking at weed charts i don't think it is...

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Comments (13)

dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
1 - Shadow Turf. It's a hybrid zoysia that does very well in shade.
2 - Since you are seeding bermuda, do it on the hottest day. You'll get fewer weeds but still some crabgrass and others.
3 - Nothing comes to mind
4 - dallisgrass. You can kill it with baking soda. Dallisgrass sheds water so you have to make the water stick. Mix in 3 ounces of shampoo and 3 of molasses to a gallon of water. Use that to spray the dallisgrass. When the leaves are moist, dust some baking soda onto them. Put the baking soda into an old sock or women's hose. That will keep the soda from falling out in clumps. The dry baking soda will stick to the wet leaves and kill the weed. This kills true crabgrass, too. It does not (always) kill St Augustine, so this approach is used to kill certain weeds in St Aug.
auteck
9 years ago
That's crabgrass on the picture, spray roundup on it.
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It looks a lot like Poa Annua, but it could also be regular Kentucky Bluegrass. My KBG is flowering right now, which is consitant with your pictures (I'm in zone 7 as well) If you had Fescue sod before, it probably had Bluegrass in it(a lot of sod farmers use it as companion to tall fescue in the transition zone) and that's what you are seeing. If you sprayed roundup and killed everything, then sodded or seeded with bermuda, then it is Poa Annua. You could also have a next door neighbor ( or very nearby) with a Fescue/bluegrass lawn and contamination is very possible by seed. Anyway, if is Poa Annua, you don't have to do anything, it will die on its own with the arrival of summer and by natural causes. If is Kentucky Bluegrass however, it will persist in your climate. If you really have bluegrass and don't want it, you can wait until Fall when your bermuda goes dormant, then spray roundup on it. That will take out the Bluegrass, but will not harm the Bermuda. More information than you probably needed.
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Tilling would have been the wrong thing to do, especially for bermuda, so don't hate on your installer. He did it right. Still the surface is not level. You can deal with that in December or wait until next June. The grass either needs to be completely dormant or growing like crazy. Your soil is not likely to be compacted. You can drive bulldozers over it all day long and it will not compact...unless the soil is saturated with water first. If the soil was saturated and then mechanically compressed, that would cause the particles of soil to squeeze the air out and that is the definition of compacted soil. Bricks are made of compacted clay. Adobe is made of compacted silt and sand. Almost no yards are truly compacted. However, many (MANY) yards are hard from a lack of adequate biology. New yards are especially prone to this because they don't get watered, fertilized with organics, and don't have a history of grass growing in them. Here's how to fix yours fast. ...and when I say fast, I mean in 3 weeks. Spray it with shampoo. Shampoo is a surfactant that will allow moisture to penetrate much deeper into the soil. When that happens the microbes in the soil have a more hospitable environment (cooler and moister) in which to thrive. It is the microbes that soften the soil for you. The shampoo application rate is 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. If you have 3,000 square feet, put 9 ounces into a hose end sprayer, fill it with water, and try to spray it evenly until the sprayer bottle is empty. You can repeat this as often as you want to, but wait for 3 weeks before you decide to repeat. Before you spray it test the soil by pushing a screw driver into it. Do that before you water and after. Then spray the yard and apply a full 1/2 to 1 inch of water all at one time. You'll have to time how long to leave the sprinkler on yourself. Do that by placing cat food or tuna cans around the yard and time how long it takes to fill them. I can tell by looking at your (dry) yard that 25 minutes is not nearly long enough. Mine takes 8 hours with turbo oscillator sprinklers on a 3/4-inch hose. That time to water 1 inch is the time you should reset your sprinklers for. Once you know that number, reset the timer and set it to water only one day per week. Bermuda in Fresno should be able to handle one day a week watering easily. I just visited a St Augustine lawn in Phoenix that only gets water once a week, so you can do it with bermuda. When the soil is right it will be very soft when moist and very firm when dry. The shampoo treatment is a replacement for aerating. You won't have to aerate ever again. Use a clear shampoo like baby shampoo. Don't use one with conditioners in it. Cheapo shampoo is fine. Generally you are correct to use the highest nitrogen number you can get easily with zeros for the other numbers. You might want to spend $25 for a soil test at Logan Labs to see if you need P or K in your fertilizer. If you do that, post your results here on this forum. Morpheuspa will read it for you and tell you how much of anything you need to apply, when to apply, and where to buy it. In addition to monthly feeding with high N, I would urge you to add at least one app per year of any organic fertilizer. The organic fertilizers feed the soil microbes so that they can help you take care of the grass. For example they keep the soil from getting hard. They also feed the grass, and there are other benefits. You can apply organics at the same time you use chemical ferts, or any other day of the year. Have you tried mowing down to 1/2-inch and letting it come back up to 3/4? Do you actually hit the ground when you mow lower than 1 inch or does it just scalp off all the green and leave brown stems? Brown stems are normal until you get it down to the 1/2-inch range. If you mow it 3x per week at 1/2-inch it will start to grow horizontally like you see on putting greens at the golf course. That's often the objective for serious bermuda growers.
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pbguy420
Original Author
9 years ago
Awesome guys thanks for the help I'll try the baking soda thing as I'd love to be saved from hand pulling for an hour a day!

What kind of shampoo? In my research I've seen various lawn shampoos for conditioning the soil, but they consist of some sized chunks of bark and stuff

Also can I find that hybrid grass at the big box stores or do I need to special order it?
pbguy420
Original Author
9 years ago
Can the baking soda method be used "in bulk" without hurting the bermuda or do I need to make sure it only hits the weeds? Due to my pulling most of the large weeds are gone and the remaining ones are small and interspersed with the best section of the new bermuda...
iriasj2009
9 years ago
I learned the hard way and just went crazy everywhere I saw it on my Bermuda lawn. I ended up with brown spots everywhere. It didn't kill my Bermuda but it stunned it. It did kill the crabgrass. Try to be careful.
neilaz
9 years ago
Cheap baby shampoo
dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
Agreed, cheap baby shampoo. The only requirement for the shampoo is that it be clear meaning you can see through it. If it is cloudy, that means it has conditioners in it which cause other issues. And shampoo instead of dish washing soap because dish washing soap is antibacterial. Bacteria and fungi is what we're trying to improve in the soil.

Too bad I didn't get back in time, but bermuda is sensitive to the baking soda, too. Even St Aug is sensitive to it but much less than other grasses. Still it is nice to see the crabgrass die such a well deserved black death. I have a totally unproved theory about how the baking soda works. I believe there are protective fungi that live on the blades of crabgrass. Generally they are hydrophobic and shed water as well as most herbicides. But when you prespray with either soapy or sugary water, then the baking soda can actually get right to the fungus and kill it. Without that protection, I believe the crabgrass becomes affected by a bacterial attack which kills it right away. I could be very wrong, but I'm sticking with that for now.
lgb0250
9 years ago
Sure hope the Bermuda works out for you but I'm skeptical. I used to think Bermuda was a very invasive grass. That is until my neighbor moved in and had centepede sod put down. Now every winter we are out there pulling centepede runners from our yard. It has already taken over a small area and killed off the Bermuda. Good luck.
pbguy420
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks for the help! So that baby shampoo is the same method I would use to begin trying to soften up my soil as well correct?

I sure hope the bermuda takes over... Even with the thatching I did prior to overseeding it didn't take as well in the centipede as it did in bare fresh topsoil but that is expected. I'll overseed again in the fall, and hope by next spring I'm looking at mostly bermuda. It is annoying currently that the bermuda grows much faster than the centipede so after two days of not mowing I've got grass from 1-4 inches all over, then centipede that doesn't seem to grow vertically at all, then a few spots that I believe the bermuda isn't growing well because it's mostly hard clay
dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
Centipede thrives in poor soil. If you start fertilizing with a high N fert once a month, water regularly, and get some organics on there, the centipede should die out. Also the bermuda will provide enough shade over the centipede that it will die out.

Are you certain it was centipede and not St Augustine? Because that is a different story and different kill method.
pbguy420
Original Author
9 years ago
Yes it was definitely bermuda I purchased, I did lots and lots of research and went with it due to after 3 years of overseeding centipede it simply can't handle my dingos high intensity sprinting all around...

One thing I haven't got too far into is the organic fertilizers which I would prefer... Would alfalfa pellets do ok for the monthly nitrogen requirements or should I use something else?
dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
If you want it to look nice, then according to Texas Weed, you need synthetics. I've heard and seen others on this forum who use alfalfa every month and it looks fine to me. It might be a cost issue with TW. He was a sod farmer using nothing but synthetics on the farm, but at home he used organics. So he knows the issues from both sides.
pbguy420
Original Author
9 years ago
I see, well I have 13000 sq ft so I guess I could do it half and half too see what works out better

What type of grass for shade (in bermuda-centipede)and a few more

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What type of grass for shade (in bermuda-centipede)and a few more

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