OK I am going to jump in here and give you some tough medicine just like my Doctor gave me 20 years ago when he said: "Make a choice to either live or die, makes me no difference I get paid the same either way" OK you did about everything you could to kill it from neglect to start with. You did not water or fertilize it. Fortunately Bermuda is some tough stuff and will survive most anything you can throw at it. Assuming it is still alive let's do this. 1. At this point I do not recommend any pre or post-emergence herbicide at this time because your grass has not established itself and is weak from neglect. Normally during the winter if it goes fully dormant (absolutely no green sprigs), you can spray anything green with Round Up to control established cool season weeds. If you just have to do something wait about 1-month and use a product called AMAZE made Greenlight sold in ACE Hardware and some Box Stores. If not there it can be ordered on line. Keep the weeds mowed down this winter. Being in SA you will get a good amount of weed growth. Keep them mowed down before they can go to SEED STAGE and compound your problem. 3. Forget over seeding. You have Bermuda sod, and there is no seed that you can buy to match it. Besides you cannot seed Bermuda until around May or June in your area. 4. Forget top dressing with anything for now. If you top-dress now over dormant Bermuda you will kill it. It has to be actively growing vigorously in the heat of summer. You can revisit this in late June or July if needed. 5. This late winter or early spring when you are certain there will be no more chance of frost, get the mower out, lower it as far as it can go, and scalp the lawn down. I DO NOT MEAN down to dirt, just really low without digging in to the dirt. Then rake up the debris. 6. About two weeks after you scalp if your timing was correct you should start seeing sprigs of green Bermuda indicating it is coming out of dormancy. When you see that happen apply a balanced fertilizer of 15-5-10 or 20-5-10. You can get it in TX at any HD under the brand name of LESCO. Apply at the recommended rate or either 6.5 lbs/Kft^2 for the 15-5-10 product or 5lbs for the 20-5-10 product. Immediately water it in at 1 inch of water. 7. OBTAIN the BERMUDA BIBLE, read it and follow it to the letter. It will tell you how to properly mow, water, and feed your Bermuda grass. This is why your grass is in such poor shape. Failure to follow a maintenance routine will result in a failed lawn no matter what type of grass you have. 99% of having a healthy and attractive lawn is proper mowing, watering, and feeding the grass. FYI Bermuda is a nitrogen hog and requires fertilizer about every 30 to 45 days during the growing season. It also needs mowing twice a week. It is a labor of love to keep attractive and relatively weed free. Don't worry about weeds right now. You need to get the grass healthy again, then worry about weeds.

Thanks Henry. With so much prey to feast on hopefully beneficial insects, "the friendlies" will increase enough in the open landscape to keep chilli thrips under control. Perhaps this is happening in Florida as I read some reports on the Florida Forum that folks had had chilli thrips in the past, but then the infestation abated. A friend wrote this on the Texas Forum: "I was living in Hawaii when whiteflies first made their appearance. It was an ugly thing. Their population exploded exponentially. Their were so many whiteflies that our ceilings were coated in them. They were absolutely everywhere. They smothered a lot of leaves in sheltered areas even though we had significant ocean breeze. It was disgusting.It took about 6 months and then they had a population implosion and it attained a balance. One never saw them. Perhaps bugs and geckos had learned to eat them. I don't know what happened. I hope some natural enemy to chilli thrips comes forth and something like this happens." Now I'm find chilli thrips are on several other plants in the garden. After seeing suspicious leaves I've ID'd them on Coral vine, Henry Duelberg salvia and Texas smoke tree by tapping the affected leaf and looking at the tiny yellow dots moving around with a 10 power jewelers loop. And I do mean tiny. They are less than the size of a period and barely visible in bright light on white paper with my reading glasses on. They are much smaller than flower thips, and looked just like the photos. Also several pale colored tiny spiders quickly scurried off the paper. They were just a little larger than the chilli thrips. Hopefully they were eating them. This makes one reluctant to spray even with spinosad, but knocking them back before winter may significantly reduced their population next summer. I don't know. Right now I'm trying to reduce the number of the most susceptible plants.

Roselee, thanks for posting pictures, you always come thru for us. Barbra

Hi, I am a little new to gardening. I have only really grown a few roses and veggies here in South Texas. I was recently buying some plants from a garden store here in San Antonio and fell in love with the scent of the gardenias. I know gardenias are nearly impossible to grow here in South Texas specifically San Antonio, but couldn't resist the intoxicating scent and bought one anyway. I also bought a star jasmine. I was wondering if anyone knew any plants that would survive here is San Antonio that are very fragrant? Thank you so much for your help.