Here is a close up

This has been a loooong fall-winter-spring for bermuda. It is usually the last grass to green up even if you don't have rye. Just be patient.

In the long term you can plan to replace the front lawn with St Augustine. Those trees will shade out the bermuda.

We won't be in the house long enough for those trees to grow that big! I play golf a lot and the courses here in Texas are mostly bermuda grass. How come they don't have problems with tree shade on the course?

I play golf in North Texas as well. The courses have a lot of Bermuda. They have the same shade problems as anyone else but they are far more proactive in preventing problems with shade. I can't be specific about what they do except the fact that there are few trees with really low limbs like you might see in a residential area. As far as your lawn... The Rye grass delays the Bermuda quite a bit. I agree with dchall. Be patient. It has been a long cool Spring. If you have fertilized you will have Bermuda that will be thick, dark green, and lush real soon. You may have to mow every other day to keep it from getting too tall.

We have mature trees but only one (huge) in the back yard is shading out the Bermuda and even then by taking off some lower limbs and improving the soil (the tree wasn't shading as much as it sucks the water out) the Bermuda is coming back.

This past winter was a lot colder and we had near record lows late into Spring. Bermuda takes off and begins to dominate the cool season annuals when soil temps get above 65.

If you can be patient, that 'scalped' look you get by keeping it very low will pay big dividends later. I train my Bermuda very short - I am 'below' the lowest setting on my mower by just releasing the level adjuster and letting it fall past the last 'pegs'. My bermuda is under .5" as a result.

Why? Well it means more sun getting to the ground and you get more Bermuda 'plants' per sqft than if you let it grow long and shade the ground. As a result, it begins choking out a lot of the 'undesirable' grasses and weeds and you get that thick carpet you want.

As the weather continues to heat up I will SLOWLY raise the blade and once I do that the little bit of 'brown' no longer shows at all.

Couple tips -
1. I spend about 3 minutes before each mow using a Dremel to sharpen the mower blade. THis makes cutting easier and once it gets hot the grass is stressed less by the clean cut insteax of 'ripping' - think about when you cut yourself with a razor vs something dull. Sharper blade equals less bleeding and faster healing.

2. I prefer to cut late in the day when things 'cool off' and the grass is 'firmer' - in the heat of a summer day it wilts a bit and perks up in the evening - that's the time to cut as it cuts more cleanly and has overnight to heal up. Cutting early morning on a 100 degree day means it has a lot more stress an loses more water.

3. Aeration and organic material... you can rent a core aerator at the Lowes/Home Depots that have tool rental. THis works miracles if the soil is a tad compacted. If you run the core aerator around and then spread either some high quality compost (Shades of Green in Frisco usually has good finished compost.... the "Black Kow" composted cow manure is good stuff as well. If you spread that around after core aeration and apply your fertilizer then your lawn will take off after the next rain.

4. I use organic fertilizers or semi-organic like the Milorganite product. Milorganite has a bunch of iron and turns your grass a darker green. Ironite works as well but stains concrete if you are not careful and the natural products feed more slowly. If you prefer the synthetic stuff, Scott's Green Max has a ton of Iron and fast greening Nitrogen. Over the past ten years I have found that the slower feeding natural stuff takes a tad longer but results in steady, uniform greening that lasts longer and it is cheaper. Your lawn can't use all of that nitrogen at one time anyway.

5. Another cheap and easy helper is 'horticultural molasses' - you can get a gallon at Lowes for like ten bucks. Either fill a hose end sprayer and water the yard or add a few ounces in a pump sprayer and spray it around. THis gets the soil microbes going and gets rid of thatch, accelerates the breakdown of stuff like dog poop and about two weeks after doing it your lawn thickens up nicely. It smells good too so why not, lol.

6. Never bag and toss your grass clippings. Use a sharp mower and those nice green tips are spread over the soil to break down and return all that good nitrogen, iron, trace minerals etcetera and helps the soil retain moisture like a thin mulch. I collect and compost neighbor's clippings which may be more trouble than you want but at least save yours. Think about it - why add all those ferts and then have them hauled away in grass? Grass clippings logically make greagt grass food as they contain what grass is made of, right?

7. Level... core aeration and spreading compost should help this naturally as the 'cores' will crumble and fill in low spots. This just means you get an even mow instead of scalped here and 3" there. I have a bad back so no longer lug dirt around to fill holes as much but I will use the blaster nozzle on my hose to flatten bumps. After a while this results in a nice level lawn and makes cutting easier.

8. Alter your cut to prevent 'ruts'. If you cut when soil is damp you get a wheel pattern, especially at the curbs. Try going two direction... up and down then back and forth one time, diagonal one way then the other the next... you avoid patterns and knock down bumps this way too.

Probably more info than you asked for by a few thousand words but I'm an OCD lawn guy and keeping that carpet of Bermuda is my think time :-) I like running around in the yard with my 18 month old and having it feel like a perfect carpet.

If you ignore everything else, stick with the low mowing height until it gets in the 100s and cut less grass more often. Also, the cool season annuals like water and are less drought tolerant than the Bermuda. You are on watering restrictions anyway but with Bermuda you want to water when it shows stress - footprints stay visible an hour later or grass shows signs of drying out. Then water the hell out of it - more water, less often mens deeper roots (Bermuda roots can go feet deep, annual rye and this $^#%%@* annual bluegrass that is living way past when it should this year have shallow roots - hot and dry kills them faster).

Happy Mowing and hang in there. Heat is your friend - train it low now and once the heat comes it will be thick and lush and will require less water to keep it nice.

Thanks for all your help! I now mow it on the second to lowest notch. I guess I'll drop it down and see what happens.

Good stuff CHF!

Any opinions on the Texas Pure products sold in Plano?

If, when you drop the mower lower, you start scalping in places, then search this forum of "leveling bermuda." It is not hard to do but take some time and planning to get it right.

So I mowed the lawn on the lowest mower setting. I've never mowed that low. Here's to hoping for an awesome full lawn this summer!

Here's me wrestling with BamBam this evening out front. I know scalping it makes you cringe but notice where our hands and feets meet grass here and you get a sense of how short and thick it is...

On the Texas Pure compost - haven't used it in a couple years but last time I did I was pleased. The top dressing (I think they called it that - finely screened?) is good stuff and fine enough that you don't get woodchips in the lawn.

My Bermuda in this pic is just builder grade common Bermuda and we moved in a year ago. When we moved in it was like 4" high and very sparse so this is our first Spring and we are fighting Poa Annua but it is finally dying off and the Bermuda is choking out all but a bit of crabgrass and Nutsedge...I pull those when I can sneak outside during an endless conference call ;-) If cockroaches can survive a nuclear war then trust me, they will be eating nice green nutsedge out of the rubble ;-)

LOL - Another nice thing about not using chemicals on the lawn is that I don't fret about us being barefoot out there. A funny thing happens after you introduce the phrase 'my oncologist' into your vocabulary... you start reading those label thingies on bottles and googling - fortunately cancer decided I was too much of a stubborn pain in the ass and moved on but once is enough and I am not all that interested in a rematch ;-)

If I have to use something toxic I do, if I can substitute something I could eat then I'd rather do that... and CHFIV is at the age where whatever he finds and can get his hands on goes straight to his mouth so I ought to try high iron toddler formula in my next compost tea ;-)

Haven't figured out the meaning of life quite yet but I'm pretty sure that rolling around in the yard with your kid barefoot has something to do with it.

CHFIII......nice posts. A lot of good info and some good stuff just about life in general. Congrats on being a cancer survive.

Shoot me an e-mail if/when you get a chance as I have a few follow up questions to some of the things you mentioned. I believe you can send me an e-mail through my profile page.

It's been about 5 days after the mow down. Starting to green up. Hoping we get some good rains this weekend.

Now that most of my bermuda is out, what type do I have? It's not very fine like I see in some yards. The house should have been sodded when it was built 7 years ago but I don't know.