Ontario bans wide use of herbicides and it's largely due to this ban that we have seen an acceleration of weed growth. I wouldn't use them anyway for safety reason and also one small bottle of weed killer would not be effective on a large yard of weeds. Don't rototill because tap rooted weeds (like dandelions) will multiply from tiny pieces of roots. you will just spread the seeds. Rototil works when you want to prepare the grounds for new plants. breaking soil oxygenates the soil and makes it healthy for whatever is already living in it. You can resod it yourself. I've done it. It's cheaper to get sod direct from suppliers rather than thru seasonal garden centers. I don't know if the hardware stores rent out machines that remove the sods in your yard but if they do have it, maybe it may can be cost less to rent it out. Once you've remove the grass, prepare the soil by evening it out, remove rocks and remains of old weeds. Then have your new sod & top soil delivered. lay down a bit of soil using a rake. Lay down sod the way you lay down carpets or tiles. topdress with a bit more soil and water down. Don't let the lawn dry out. In early fall, sprinkle with grass seeds and top them with a bit of grit (brick sand) to prevent birds from eating the seeds. By spring those seeds will come up as new grass. Re-seed in spring every 2 weeks. Top dress with a thin layer of topsoil and grit again. (in fact, top dress & reseed every spring) Another thing about resodding. -- is what to do with the old stuff. Well, in my case, when I marked out an area for my garden bed, I piled it upside down in the same area and let the old grass rot away. This made the soil very rich and I was able to plant a number of good perennials on those mounds. If you do choose to weed your lawn gradually - which is my preferred option, water the entire area down so the soil is loose. Take one of those large garden forks and stab the earth to wiggle the weeds loose and then pull the weeds out. I had done this for my backyard and managed to remove over 99 percent of my dandelions this way. Crab grass is quite easy to remove but just so tedious. They also reseeds so fast. When you do see young crabgrass, that a rake and scratch them loose. This is enough to kill them. When you see young weeds growing in spot, just disturb them and it wil be enough to kill them. Another method of suppressing established weeds is to take thick black plastic and block the area from the sun for several days. The lack of sunlight will kill everything beneath the sheet.

I was never able to hull last year's harvest. I tried several methods but none worked. I didn't try any heating method. What I ended up doing was to sell most of it to a seed company. DW and I had a nice dinner out on the proceeds. Short of a good hulling method, probably the best that could be done is use the grain for sprouts or chicken feed. As for the cardinals: in winter and spring we usually have a pair that raises a family. You know, one pair per yard. The last few years I have been noticing that four to six juveniles take up residence during the summer. Maybe the adults go north. Usually we have lots of sunflowers that they like to eat. Due to excessive rain this year, the sunflowers didn't make it. I had some early volunteer rice that they ate on till the main crop came in. They ate some around the perimeter, sometimes perching on the top and sometimes dragging the seed heads to the ground. However, after the rice got hard, they gave up and lately have been after crape myrtle seeds - along with the squirrels and jays.

I havested bluebonnet seeds last year, (2018) at this time of the year, that is approximately mid- April. I live just south of San Antonio. I followed directions from the internet. When the pods turned from yellow to mostly brown I collected them in clear baggies. Some popped open on their own in the baggies but I shelled many of them. I collected hundreds of seeds. There is a short window to harvest the seeds before the pods pop open on their own. If the pods are green, wait until they start turning from yellow to brown. I stored them in baggies over summer. Information from the internet said the seeds have shells that prevent them from germinating until the shells crack. So seeds can sit dormant in the ground for several years. To crack the shell for germination the next year this is what I read and did. In mid-October I put the seeds in my freezer overnight, actually for 2 days. I took them out and immediately poured boiling water over the seeds. I could hear them crack like rice Krispies. I then sowed them by hand in my yard. I did not cover them with soil, just threw them out in sandy soil away from the grassy area of my backyard. I did not water them or feed them but we did have a rainy fall and winter last year. In February I could see hundreds of plants laying flat on the ground. Their leaves are their distinguishing identifier. In March the stems appeared and the plants raised upward and I had a lush Bluebonnet patch that came from the seeds I just harvested the prior year. Now, back in mid-April, the pods are just now turning yellow and are not quite brown but they will be in the next day or two, a week at most. So in a couple days it will be time to harvest. I cut the brown pods off with scissors. I leave some pods to pop on their own. If you wait too long the pods will twist and pop out the seeds as nature intended. Also the plants are hard to find once the blue is gone and the other plants and weeds cover them up so it helps to mark your patch if it's in a large area. Don't mow your bluebonnets until the seeds pop, at least two weeks after the blue is gone.

Not all grasses are the same, and Bermuda is probably one of the worst do deal with. (Our city promotes its use because it is cheap from seed, drought tolerant, will survive a nuclear bomb, etc... By the same logic, they should promote Cockroaches as house pets.) I hate Bermuda grass, in case you didn't figure that out. You are in a dry climate, and Bermuda grass runners can (and probably will) be over 8 inches deep where they are well protected from drought and heat extremes (including some of the treatments described above). They can run for several feet undetected before popping up and populating a new location in your garden -- in my case, among the cacti and agaves. (You haven't lived as a TX gardener until you've tried to extricate Bermuda grass from your agave bed... Extra points if fire ants are involved...) I hate to say it, but physical removal followed up with judicious applications of herbicide on stragglers that reveal themselves will probably be your best option. I have succeeded in completely eliminating the stuff inside of a year that way, but the bed preparation was pretty back-breaking. I don't recommend *spraying* herbicide. Get a cheap foam brush and paint the offending stragglers so as to avoid any overspray that might otherwise affect your garden, and make sure you have a deep physical barrier b/w the lawn and your flower beds. Bermuda is ruthless. Stay after it, and don't let it get ahead of you once you have your flowers down.