Kikuyu is one of those grasses that grows like a wild fire in the right conditions. Here is a picture of it invading a highway. Back in the 70s in California the highway department had one truck hydrosprigging kikuyu and another truck spraying it to kill it out. It was growing over the roads and causing accidents from cars slipping on it. Since you measure in meters I must assume you do not live in the US. Where do you live? Kikuyu can be a tame grass when the conditions are not quite perfect for it. If you live in California, then all you need is for one sprig to take hold and you'll soon have an entire lawn of it. If you are in the US you might consider Tech Turf buffalo grass by the Turffalo company. It is plugged in and spreads much faster than any other buffalo I am aware of. Here is a picture demonstrating the spreading over a sidewalk a few weeks after it was mowed. My understanding it you can have a full lawn of Tech Turf in a month by sprigging according to the directions.

We laid a small area of buffalo grass in our Native Plant Garden, as it is a Texas native. We have been astonished at the growth of this grass, and the beauty! It is gorgeous! I am not sure what variety we have, but it has long runners. I am harvesting those runners and planting them along the back edge of my pond, as I want a grass embankment, to look more natural. I am not familiar with conditions in Salt Lake City, Utah, but I would go easy on any additional fertilizer, if it were mine. We added nothing to ours, and the growth has been fantastic! Good Luck! Janie

There are some people who talked about getting TIF-Grand but I have not read about their successes. I'm not a fan of zoysia. I have a spot of it as an experiment. At first I thought it was great, but it did not compete well with bermuda. Disappointed, but at least it's not my main lawn. I was also disappointed that we let it go dormant one summer and it never greened up again that season. It greened up fine the next April, but that was a long time. And that's when the bermuda got in. I see that in the full zoysia lawns in my neighborhood. It is definitely not all it's cracked up to be. I have another suggestion for the lawn. If you are patient, do the power rake only on the grass in the shade. Then put down only enough St Aug for the shady area. Make sure that takes well and sit back. The St Aug will spread and spread to take over the bermuda. All you have to do is pamper the St Aug and don't pamper the bermuda. That means mow all the grass at your mower's highest setting, fertilize infrequently, and water deeply and infrequently. St Aug spreads when the temps are between 60 degrees and 80, so you'll have two windows of opportunity. It will spread in the spring and again in the fall. It should spread about 5 feet each time. I let that happen at my house in George West, TX and now have an additional 3,000 square feet of lawn (acre lot started mostly in weeds). SuperSod mentioned compaction. Unless you've been parking the car on the lawn, playing football in the rain, or grazing livestock in the rain, then your soil is not compacted. It is very likely hard, but hard and compacted are different things. Compacted comes from driving all the air out of soggy soil. That's how adobe bricks are made. Hard soil comes from reduced population of beneficial microbes - chiefly fungi. You can get those back very easily. Apply 3 ounces of any clear shampoo per 1,000 square feet with a hose end sprayer. Follow that up with at least 1/2 inch of water. Repeat every few weeks as necessary. I did mine in San Antonio twice in 2011 and it's still soft today (checked after the rain yesterday). You'll know it worked when your soil becomes very soft after deep watering and then becomes very firm again a day or two later. That's normal. Give that a try. In my opinion burying compost is way over rated. Shampoo, deep watering, and routine use of alfalfa pellets should be plenty enough to boost your organic matter.

I know this is old but I am wanting to find out if you successfully used Sod cut up into plugs? I have been harvesting sod plugs from another yard (using a sod plugger tool) and then putting them in my yard. I wanted to just get a pallett of sod and try to speed up the process but in researching I found out that true "Sod" does not have the root system like a a plug that you pull or a tray of plugs that you buy. So that is why I wanted to see if you tried cutting up pieces of sod and using them as plugs?? If that worked it is MUCH cheaper than buying plugs and it would be alot faster than driving to harvest 75-100 plugs at a time :)