Hi Eric,
It's good that you have read the Bermuda Bible. You didn't say as much, but your approach is identical to what Texas Weed has put together. There are a couple of things you said which should be changed. This time of year you should not be watering twice a week. Even in McAllen you should only be watering once every 2 weeks. Have you done the tuna/catfood can test with your sprinklers to time how long it takes to water a full inch? If not then you don't know what deep watering is. My sprinkler in San Antonio takes 8 hours to water deeply. My neighbor's takes only 20 minutes. You need to know what yours is so you can truly deep water. Watering more frequently will ONLY bring up weed seeds. It will not help the grass to spread faster. As long as the water is in there deep, the grass will get to it. And if it rains, delay your watering schedule. I also have a house in George West. When it rains an inch there, my St Augustine can go 3 weeks without a drink.

I assume you are mowing at your mower's lowest setting. That's how you know the soil needs some fill for the low spots. It is much better to fill with real soil or sand rather than compost or mulch. Compost and mulch are organic and will completely disappear leaving the holes to form again. When you fill the low spots with sand or topsoil, mound it up just slightly or else it will leave a depression as the soil settles over the next 3 years.

If you want to improve your soil organic matter, you are much farther ahead using organic fertilizers like corn meal, alfalfa pellets, cottonseed meal, or whatever inexpensive ground up nut, bean, or seed you can find at your local feed store. For me this year it is corn meal and alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow not horse cubes). You can stick with the monthly app of high N synthetic fertilizer, but at least once a year, I would add an additional dose of organic at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. That will make the synthetic ferts work better in many ways.

Seed with a mixture of Yukon, Riviera, and Princess 77 at a rate of 3 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Best place to get seed happens to be in San Antonio. Douglass King Seed is inside Loop 410 where I-10 EAST meets it going toward Houston. They are closed on weekends, but their website is open at http://www.dkseeds.com.

For your dry cracked area, put a soaker hose on that area. Adjust the water at the faucet so that it's only coming out at 1 cup per minute. That is a fast drip at the faucet. Then coil the soaker hose around the dry area. Let it run a full week, day and night. That should swell the soil and close the cracks. Then you have to work on organic matter right there. First...is that area shady? If so you will never have bermuda in there. You can seed, the seed will sprout, and then it will die from lack of sun. Otherwise I would apply a mulch or compost on top of the soil and let it sit for a month. You have time because bermuda needs hot summer soil for the seeds to sprout. For you that is mid May. But mulching heavily (1-2 inches) and leaving it for a month will work wonders for that particular soil. You won't even need water there while it's mulching its way back to health.

You might have had your soil tested at TPSL in Edenburg. If so please post your results. If you have not, then get the Logan Labs $25 test and post those results as Daniel mentioned above. The TPSL test is different from the Logan Labs test in a couple ways. You get more for your money at Logan Labs and, Morpheuspa is expert at reading the LL tests.

Thank you both for the answers! I will be getting a soil test through Logan Labs and go from there.

My home does have some shady areas, but not a lot. I will pay more attention on the amount of sun it gets on certain areas. On the full shade areas, what grass do you recommend?

Thank you once again!

St Augustine is the only warm weather grass that thrives in the shade. It tends to escape into the bermuda and can wipe it out. It might be better to put flower beds in rather than St Augustine.

dchall, thanks for the fast response once again. FYI, I actually travel biweekly to George West for work :). I greatly appreciate the help. First things first, soil test and I will go from there before I do anything else.

Ok guys, finally doing the soil test this weekend and sending them to Logan Labs. Local labs charges $70! I'm attaching a few more pics. The 2 in 1 pic is the difference of when I moved into the home, around September 2014 and current. I want to say it has come a long way. The other pics are today's pic. I have noticed light green colorings vs the deep green it was getting. Remember, I layer down 2 fertilizers 30 days apart from each. We have been having a tremendous amount of rain. Both times I threw fertilizer we had inches of rain all week. I'm assuming all the rain washed out the fertilizer.

Can this yellowing happen because of too much fert? I've been reading a lot and it seems it might be lacking iron or even more nitrogen due to the light green color? I'll post my results as soon as I get them from the soil test. Thanks in advance!

The list of what can't cause yellowing is far shorter than the list of what can. Basically, mis-balance in any resource that's involved in chlorophyll production or photosynthesis can cause a discoloration of the lawn.

Or it could be as simple as the soil's been wet for a while, it's been cloudy for a while, or it's been a little cold at the 4" soil layer for a bit.

Only your soil test will tell us for sure.

We haven't had full sun in weeks! A peek here or there. Our weather is unusually strange. By now, it would have been close to 100, and rain here and there, if any. I will wait for the results to post. Thanks again Morpheus!