alleged drought resistance is on an established plant ... all recent transplants must be watered heavily and deeply until establishment ... second ITS NEARLY AUGUST ... maybe discounted plants should be left potted in the shade UNTIL PROPER PLANTING TIME IN September.. when the days are shorter.. the nights are longer ... oh the days dwindle down.. to a precious few.. September... oh... where have all the hogie Carmichael's gone .. anyway i digress..... lol .. here is the words running through my head: Oh, its a long, long while from May to December, But the days grow short when you reach September. When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame one hasn't got time for the waiting game. Oh the days dwindle down to a precious few September November And these few precious days I'll spend with you. These precious days I'll spend with you. --- and i see it wasn't Carmichael.. its on willie nelsons stardust.. but i am seriously digressing.. i wish this typewriter had a delete button .... rotf ... anyway ... what tree is it under .. you know my thoughts on maples ... how dry was the soil when you planted it.. how hot has it been since you ripped it from the pot ... how many roots did you cut through before you got a hole big enough for it .... etc ... sorry about the perennial forum .... lol ... good luck .. water the bee gee bees out of them .... ken

What ground cover would you use? I'd be surprised if you could find a ground cover that would do better with less water than a native lawn. If you want to try growing buffalo grass without killing the existing lawn, you might be able to make it work. Don't water at all in the spring. If it's as dry there as it is here, the lawn will probably be dormant by early to mid June. Mow the lawn as low as you can, preferably while it is still green, but stressed. That will stress it further. Bag or rake the clippings. If you can rent a seed drill, that would be your best bet. Note that buffalo grass seeds are huge compared with most grass seeds, so I doubt if a slit seeder will work. A seed drill is more specialized and may not be easy to find. The next best would be to water, then core aerate the lawn. This exposes more soil for the seeds to contact with broadcast seeding. After seeding, you need to water at least daily and probably twice a day for a week or two until the seed sprouts. Unfortunately, this will probably wake the KBG from its dormancy. Gradually cut back until you're watering every other week or so. The KBG won't be able to stay green under those conditions. When the monsoons hit in the fall, the KBG will start to perk up, and as weather cools, the buffalo grass will go dormant. If you want, you can spray roundup while the buffalo grass is dormant. It will kill the green grass (and any weeds) but leave the dormant buffalo grass alone). The following year, don't water at all, or water only once a month to keep the buffalo grass happy. The KBG won't do so well and the buffalo grass will spread more. If you don't mind a slightly wild look, let it grow to full height (only about 4 inches) and go to seed. If you let it go to seed, that will help it spread. It also spreads by stolons (like rhizomes, but above ground). Many people sow blue grama seed along with buffalo grass. Blue grama is more of a bunch grass, but is another warm season grass so it mixes well with buffalo grass. Many native lawns have mixtures of warm and cool season grasses, so you could try mixing in some of the wheatgrasses and sheep fescue, but if you do that, you won't be able to use roundup to kill weeds and KBG during buffalo grass dormancy. Another disadvantage is that you'll have patches of green and brown at different times of the year. If you water every other week or so during the summer, you should be able to keep the cool season natives green, so you'd only have the patchiness in the early spring and late fall.

Yep, it's entirely possible you got a flawed reading last year, with the better (but not what I'd call stellar) soil that came with the sod. I reproduced last year's recommendations below with some modifications. If it isn't inconvenient for you, do this again. It won't hurt, but might not help--we won't know until 2017. I stepped up the amount of calcium considerably and cut the boron. We'll ride that for a year. Don't bother to top dress. Peat moss contains no nutrients, cow manure contains far too much nitrogen. :-) Just keep tossing the organics around, it's easier, cheaper, and will do the same job. I didn't include most things like cracked corn below as they can be dropped whenever you wish, even on the same day something else goes if you want! Recommendations for 2016: May 1: Apply any starter fertilizer at bag rate. Apply 1 pound of potassium sulfate per thousand square feet. May 15: Apply Encap or Mag-I-Cal calcitic lime at 4 pounds per thousand square feet. June 1: Apply 1 pound Epsom salt per thousand square feet. Apply Milorganite at the bag rate. June 15: Apply 1 pound of potassium sulfate per thousand square feet. July 1: Apply Milorganite at the bag rate. August 1: Apply 1 pound of potassium sulfate per thousand square feet.. Apply Milorganite at the bag rate. September 1: Apply any starter fertilizer at half the bag rate. October 1: Apply 1 pound of potassium sulfate per thousand square feet. October 15: Apply Encap or Mag-I-Cal calcitic lime at 3 pounds per thousand square feet. November 1: Apply 1 pound Epsom salt per thousand square feet. November 15: Apply 1 pound of potassium sulfate per thousand square feet.

Wow... that was a lot of information! Dmt gave good information and probably knows a lot more than me. I live in JAX area also, and had my yard trenched for AT&T. Those areas usually die b/c you would have to water it like new sod. Half of mine survived, half didn't. When I moved in last fall all my neighbors had decent looking front yards. Now almost all of them near me have what looks like extensive damage from something. My back yard has issues, not sure what, but so far my front yard, seemingly in danger from whatever is ailing my area of the street, is holding on strong. Sites like this rescued my front yard (HOC, watering, bug damage, etc...). Can't see your sprinkler head you mention. If the sprinkler head is above the ground level you could reposition it to be level with the ground (may need a taller pop up if you do that). You may have tried, but you can usually adjust the spray radius of the sprinkler heads so maybe you could even out that wet spot by adjusting the nozzles. Organic is noble, but I can't help you there. I do use milorganite (greenedge is the local almost equivalent in our area), although my wife complained yesterday about the smell of both. Oh, weed #2 looks like surge to me. Celsius will kill it I think... Bottom right of the bare spot #3 picture looks like maybe some kind of sedge or kyllinga seed heads. It looks suppressed, possibly from the previous weed treatment company. A couple weeks after you think it was treated last you could try treating it again. I think Celsius kills kyllinga but not nutsedge, and sedgehammer kills nutsedge but only 'supresses' kyllinga. So there's a conundrum-proper weed ID would obviously help. You could try each but make sure to space out apps by at least a couple weeks to make sure your grass isn't stressed from the app, probably don't want to apply the herbicide if your grass is stressed. You could probably get away with using sedgehammer on anything nutsedge like, hand pull the rest (as a general rule you don't pull up nutsedge) as they come up, and apply a quality pre-emergent in the fall. I say that b/c honestly your yard looks pretty decent. It's not that bad, at least not in the photos. Of course it doesn't' compare to the lawns of the experts on these forums, but us normal people have to keep our expectations in check. You may of course evolve into an expert... Have you checked for chinch bugs? Hopefully the experts chime in if I misspoke...