Yep. Big costly mistake...

You should have never overseeded bermuda lawn. Rye basically slowed bermuda from greening up and robbed nutrients from bermuda till it gets hot enough to kill off rye.

It's a long shot. It's highly unlikely that rye would starve bermuda of water or nutrients to the point of death.
The reason it's brown is because it requires high nitrogen fertilizer like turfbuilder or lesco 39-0-0 every 30 days approximately. It also requires frequent mowing once fertilized to prevent scalping which will turn it brown. The sod farmers want you to know that bermuda is drought tolerant. And this is true. It tolerates drought. But that doesn't mean it will be green during a drought. It means it will grow back when the rain returns. In fact you can spray your lawn with roundup 7 times and have it dormant or without leaves for nearly a year and it will still come back.

IF you've done all of this then perhaps you had too much cold weather for the type of bermuda that you planted and it died from that. Also unlikely in tenn.

Also. I'n my opinion, if you're in EAST tn, your only mistake was using bermuda in your rye lawn. Try to get rid of whatever bermuda remains and put down a cool season grass that is more suitable to your climate and keep bermuda far away from it.

I have to agree 100%. I grow bermuda and never overseed it. But in E. Tn. it's too cold to expect a good healthy stand of bermuda. Overseeding can play a role in killing bermuda because the rye can shade out the bermuda plus with cooler weather that is already one type of stress. I've see shady areas killed outright so conditions could allowe bermuda to die outright. But I doubt the whole lawn would die all of the sudden just from overseeding. You can get rid of bermuda by spraying at a 3% rate of round up in middle August then again in early September. Then plant your cool season grass and shouldn't have any bermuda next season.

Thanks for the replies... I suppose the rye just slowed the bermuda from greenup. I also have some zoysia in the overseeded area and it seems to be okay. For sevral years the bermuda and zoysia thrived and was very thick. I never realized overseeding would stunt them like this.

I have applied 1 lb./1,000 sq. ft of nitrogen twice over the past 6 weeks to try and wake it up. So far, it's not responding. We have had a very dry summer which isn't helping.

I have applied 1 lb./1,000 sq. ft of nitrogen twice over the past 6 weeks to try and wake it up. So far, it's not responding.

What about water? Fertilizer alone is not going to do anything.

Unless professionally maintained never over seed your Bermuda lawn. It is going to August before your lawn recovers, then here comes Sept/OCT while the grass is still weak and time to over seed again. Another late green up in June or July, and repeat cycle. See a problem here?

You donÂt know the trick pros use to do this, we do something in March or April to kill off the rye/fescue or whatever we over seed with and another something to wake up the Bermuda.

Yes, I have irrigated as well. Once a week deep soaking.

Yes indeed texas-weed we do have a trick in the bag for killing off the rye. It's called a revolver. Or manor works ok but you can't beat a revolver from my experience.

Oh somebody's talking about atrazine.

I think Tee Dub would probably agree with the north of I-40 rule in this case.