thanks. pic #2 and #3 are actually of same grass in same area but lighting affected color. Both grasses send runners out underground very similar to bermuda grass that I experienced where I used to live but doesn't seem AS aggressive as bermuda grass but you can get long strands with "tentacles" on them as you dig into the soil and dig them up. The runners I've seen are usually short but I've seen as long as perhaps 6". Does that give further insight? The description for orchardgrass didn't make mention of runners so I wanted to provide this additional info.

I'm certainly no expert, but I know you can get a clue if you look at the shape of the stem between where the roots begin up to where the leaves branch out. If it feels triangular or some other shape that helps to narrow it down. You can find information for weed ID on sites like: http://weeds.cropsci.illinois.edu/weedid.htm I think it is a slow day in the forum. I'm sure you'll get some good replies tomorrow.

It's up to you. Looks like the person across the road has a really nice lawn. I would use RoundUp to kill everything mid-Aug, put in your garden bed and seed the remaining area with tall fescue mid-September. It's a small lawn, all you need is a mower to scalp, a rake to clean up the clippings and thatch, put down the seed, and water. Pre-emergent is going to be a must next year, all that crabgrass will produce millions of seeds, it will invade your garden bed and lawn again and possibly even worse.

I've had this tab open for months and never got around to a reply. I realize this is the organic forum, but I'm afraid there is no good organic solution for weeds in bermuda. You could spray the weeds with vinegar, but that does not always kill the weed plant. It kills the top growth for most weeds, so if you have a healthy stand of bermuda, you can sometimes kill off the tops of weeds and let the fast moving bermuda move in, but it doesn't sound like you have a strong growing bermuda yet. The reason people in Texas and other states use Logan Labs is that Logan Labs has been vetted by many thousands of homeowner lawn soil tests, and their accuracy and reliability is unsurpassed. The only other lab close to LL is UMASS. If you live in Mass, then you can go with your state lab. TAMU labs, on the other hand, have been discredited in an open letter apologizing for decades of incorrect soil testing. Furthermore, Logan Labs provides more information than TAMU does. To get the same testing done at TAMU would cost between $60 and $100 depending on their current pricing structure. LL does it for $25. The high calcium and pH of Texas soils is well known. We live on 1,000 feet of limestone. There is no amount of acidifiers that will change the pH or calcium levels of the base soil around here. At best we can affect the top of the root zone temporarily until the next rainstorm washes away any acids that might have built up. I'm not soil test expert, but I've read a bunch of them on this and other forums. I've never seen a Total Exchange Capacity higher than 20. A value of less than 8 usually means you have a sandy soil incapable of holding onto chemical fertilizer salts. A value approaching 20 usually means you have a clay soil. I'm not sure what your values are saying. You might call Logan Labs and ask them if they think there is something fishy about that value or maybe, knowing that the value came out like that, there is another way to test the soil. It would be good to see a picture of the crabgrass you are suffering from. When I first saw St Augustine grass, I mistook it for crabgrass. While it may have some of the coarse blade appearance of crab, St Augustine is much better behaved. If you had the all winter, then it was not crabgrass. Crabgrass dies out completely at the first frost. A picture would be helpful. If you have an invasion of St Augustine, I would suggest letting it take over the bermuda, because St Augustine can easily dominate bermuda, and it is easier to manage. Now that your grass is up and growing, please post a pic.