bermuda thin and dry, needs to be revived.
Comments (22)
dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
tig488
9 years ago
I live in trussville, alabama. The trees are oaks. I usually try to water at least twice a week during the warmer months. I haven't watered lately but we have been getting a lot of rainfall, much more than usual.
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trees bigger now, bermuda thinning / what grass to plant?!
Comments (11)I started some st Augustine in my Bermuda lawn last year. It is encroaching well into the Bermuda . The trick is to mow high and keep in mind that st Augustine thrives on less fertilizer than is optimal for Bermuda. I will more or less neglect the Bermuda and fertilize and water the St Augustine area, the encroachment area and the trees. I am starting while the trees are still small. Then again it's just grass and I would rather have plantings of perennial beds, veggie beds and walkways in all over(and I am digging up all the lawn a little at a time, less area for the st Augustine to take over any way) all that I need is just a small area of grass for the dogs to do there business in. That's what grass is for IMO, a canine latrine. But as long As I have a lawn I might as well keep it acceptable to city code. But, My vote for the shady grass(as long as the trees aren't sucking all moisture from the ground since that can cause die off of anything). Good luck and enjoy the Bermuda battle....See MoreThis is when you need to dethatch Bermuda
Comments (23)Back to BermudaTamer...the reason your grass is thin between the houses is due to the shade there. You have a neighbor house on the west and yours on the east. One blocks the morning sun and the other blocks the afternoon. There is a variety of zoysia called Shadow Turf that will grow in there easily. Here is a picture of it growing underneath a very dense English walnut tree. The thin area between the driveway and the tree ring is on the north side and gets virtually no direct sunlight all day. It started out as 1-inch plugs about 18 months earlier and has expanded about 6 inches in the deepest shade. The rest is fully involved and very dense. Shadow Turf is very fine bladed and very dense if it gets any light at all. That house faces west. I took the picture at high noon, so that strip of sunlight you can see is all the yard really gets. Across the street to the west the trees are very tall and block the afternoon sun....See MoreNeed Advice on New Bermuda Lawn
Comments (6)Wow 7.0 PH, hard to believe but perfect. Ok letÂs store away any post-mergence herbicides until next year. I know that seems odd, but it is too-late and too hot to be of any good now. Using any now would set you back. The grass type you planted are very good common types, good choice. However they are not the types you can mow real low to the ground like hybrids. So letÂs raise the cutting height a bit too around 1 to 1-1/2 maybe even 2-inches for the rest of the year. I looked at your pictures and noticed a bit of scalping and thin areas as a result of mowing to low for your grass type. Not to worry, plenty of time left to get things in order this year. Over all looks very good for a May panting. You have also discovered a watering problem. 20-minutes per zone is not enough for any irrigation system to put down 1-inch. You say 1-hour will do it, sounds good to me; just make sure 1-hour is the ticket to 1-inch. With that said you have very young grass with very shallow roots. With your previous under-watering, severe heat, and what sounds like a schedule by your description, your grass has been deprived of water and shows it a bit along with scalping. So here is what you do. Get out of the habit of watering once a week whether it needs it or not. LetÂs learn to water when the grass says it is thirsty and ready for a drink. In this hot weather coupled with your young shallow rooted grass, it is more than likely to be more than once a week. What you need to learn is to look at the grass and let it speak to you. Sounds crazy but is very easy. There are two ways to tell: Colored Talk: Yes I am joking and serious. Bermuda will change color from emerald green to a slightly blue or grayish color. This is caused by the blades wilting and curling up to conserve moisture. The undersides of the blades are a different color than the top, so when it wilts the hue changes color. DonÂt wait for the whole lawn to change color, look for the high and dry parts to just start the change or the very first signs. Soak it. Walk Test: Just simply walk across the lawn and look back. If your foot prints do not disappear quickly, and it feels crunchy, SOAK IT As far as fertilizer goes, only use straight nitrogen for now like 29-0-0. Preferable a slow release urea type applied every 45 days up till about 30-days before you expect a frost. At that time we will talk about a pre-emergence herbicide, but for now forget about herbicides other than either ordering one for the fall and spring applications. Hope that helps....See MoreNeed Help Reviving Ficus
Comments (30)Sean, I'm glad you like the sick and dying plants thread, despite its morbid title. You've made a great start by digging into the details and coming up with a plan. As for whether your ficus will be okay if you don't take drastic measures right away, all I can do is repeat my experience, because last September my ficuses were still in five year old peat based potting soil and were so rootbound that it took two or three tries to get my thin dowel past the mass of roots to check the soil moisture, and their mite infestation had weakened them. Things would be different if your ficus were circling the drain, as Al puts it, but it's not even in the drain's neighborhood. Like you I wanted to repot all of my plants right away once I learned what I'd been doing wrong, but I took the advice to try to build up their energy reserves first even though I wasn't really sure it was even possible. But after doing the stuff on that list they perked up, and within a few months had grown enough roots to put out a slow but steady stream of new leaves. By the time they went outside they had already started backbudding and had maybe twice the leaf area as before in the form of big, shiny, supple leaves that might as well have come from a different plant. In short, I'm really glad I waited. Aside from giving the ficus a head start before repotting, waiting until June will give you plenty of time to decide which mix to use, find ingredients, and read up on repotting details. Meanwhile you'll spend a few minutes every time you water examining every new shoot and leaf, admiring its progress, and musing about all the different ways you can start to direct its shape when you finally get to prune it next summer. As for me, I've decided to use a variation on Al's 1:1:1 mix for my trees to make it retain more moisture without reducing aeration and drainage. Summer daytime RH in Salt Lake City is about 15% to 25%, with 90-100 degree highs, constant breezes on my porch, strong high-elevation sunlight, and pretty sparse monsoon action (not that the porch would get much rain during storms). Even the non-rootbound plants in Miracle Gro Moisture Control get bone dry within three days of a good soaking, and the plants in 5:1:1 mix desperately need water every other day, so I believe a straight 1:1:1 mix would put them in danger if I didn't check more than once a day. I've decided to use an adjusted gritty with a 4:3:2 ratio of turface, bark, and grit that Al recommends in this thread. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/4195423/adjusting-gritty-mix?n=13. I don't know if Denver is dry or hot enough to need more water retention than the 1:1:1 mix, and there are other ratios that are less of a departure, but in your elevation and climate I thought you might want to know about the options as you continue to think about all this stuff. Lenore...See Moretexas_weed
9 years agotig488
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agodchall_san_antonio
9 years agoWelcome back to Texas Weed. For those of you who don't know him, he was
a bermuda sod farmer in North Texas and has retired to manage a golf
course in Sedona, Arizona. He's single-handedly responsible for tens of
thousands of successful bermuda lawns around the world. Before he came
to GardenWeb, bermuda was considered a weed. He is adept at both
organic and chemical management methods.
tig488, when you do
water, how long do you leave it on? The basic idea with watering any
lawn is to put down a lot of water and then hold off as long as the
grass will let you. DO NOT WORRY ABOUT YOUR NEIGHBOR'S LAWNS. You will
be surprised and maybe shocked to find how long your lawn will go
without water when you water it deeply. Deep means 1 full inch as
measured by tuna or cat food cans around the yard. Time how long it
takes to fill them and then water for that time every time you water.
When it rains, just delay how long you go between watering. This time
of year, for most of the country, you should be watering about once a
MONTH. For every 10 degrees above 60 degrees, shorten the interval by a
week. With temps in the 90s, it should be once a week. If you have
weeks of temps in the 100s, then go to once every 5 days.
I
agree with weed that shade is an issue for you. The picture is good but
can you back away and take one showing the tree canopy over the lawn?
You might need to stand in the street for that one.
On another
note, your trees are buried too deep. You need to pull the mulch or
whatever it is away from the trunk of the tree so you can see the roots
flaring out at the base. If you do not then the mulch or soil will hold
the moisture against the bark of the trunk leading to disease on the
bark. That disease will encroach into the tree and slowly girdle it.
Trunk bark is different from root bark. Roots are (obviously) designed
to be where it's moist all the time. Trunk bark is not. This is what the bottom should look like. It doesn't have to be this extreme, but this is fine.
texas_weed
9 years agotig488
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agotexas_weed
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agotig488
9 years agolast modified: 9 years agoHere's a close up showing some new growth. question, I'm having a hard time finding any 20-5-10. I found lesco 19-0-7 pre-emergent with dimension, will that work?
texas_weed
9 years agoneilaz
9 years agodchall_san_antonio
9 years agotig488
9 years agoUpdate, this is after fertilizing and after 3 cuts. We've had a ton of rain, more than it's rained in years. I've got lots of pouanna . It's growing in ok, but at the trees bases it's going really slow.
On the other side of my driveway it's super thick, but it gets full sun and no erosion.
dchall_san_antonio
9 years agodchall_san_antonio
8 years agoWes
8 years agotig488
8 years agotig488
8 years agoThanks to morpheuspa for all the info on my soil results.
How in the world do I get new growth in my cypress mulch directly underneath the trees where there is almost zero direct sunlight but I can't get grief anywhere else?!? That's what's frustrating me.For some reason the forum keeps flipping the image.
morpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
8 years agodchall_san_antonio
8 years ago
grasshole