I really enjoyed seeing the transformation! The buffalo looks so pretty and soft!

Nice! Thank you so much for sharing, I've always been interested in buffalo grass, but never saw this kind of step by step of switching over. Very cool!

I love to see grass, hope this does extremely well for you. Thanks for taking us through the steps................very interesting.

It seems like wild Bermuda grass has always found its way into every buffalo grass yard I've seen. Has it been a problem for you?

Thanks for the comments. Our son's dog really does seem to find it much softer/nicer to lie on than the St Augustine, ryegrass, and especially the ratibida shoots that endured the contractor traffic.

Forgot to include a link to the most helpful and realistic buffalo grass overview I found: The Benefits and Challenges of Using Buffalograss (OSU). It references these Instructions for Installing Buffalograss Plugs that address weed control... which I didn't exactly follow, but would on a repeat. We did go with a different root dip (Organic Plant Magic) that was suggested in the nursery's (HCG) instructions.

Bressler, Virtually all of the original Bermuda in our backyard had been killed off by years of dense shade and we had 18+ months to deal with any possible survivors in the brighter edges - we're as sure as we can be that it's Bermuda free. It's also surrounded by concrete and/or heavy shade, so not much chance of rhizome infiltration from outside. The similar appearance would make it hard to detect early, but am hopeful we can keep it out. Front yard would not be so easy since some Bermuda endures within both our and our neighbors' St Augustine.

Seems cutting off the water and letting the buffalo go brown early could enable you to spot treat any greener Bermuda patches as long as it's caught soon enough. Should also be able to notice any with their earlier green-up in the spring. Hopefully pre-emergents will deal with any wild seed that manages to blow in.

Thank you so much for posting this bostedo!

I don't remember seeing this before. What a beautiful outcome! And it's very interesting to see the process you went through to get it going!

For our more southern climate we plugged in Floratam St. Augustine for our small grass space several years ago. It is as sun and drought tolerant as Bermuda, but is somewhat cold tender. However, the last couple of winters were the first time in the eight or nine years we've had it when we had quite a bit of die back due to sudden cold snaps while it was still green. Bermuda filled in early, and thankfully enough of the very vigorous Floratam survived to smother most of it by mid summer.

Brown spots from dog urine is a problem with any grass. I just sigh a little and try to look the other way ...

Roselee, Our 'Raleigh'/'Palmetto' St Augustine front lawn has not responded well to my attempts to harden it to one deep watering per week max. I prepped a damaged section with herbicide that I was hoping to patch this spring with the new 'Tamstar' you've mentioned before, but it's still having supply problems. At this point, I'd plug the "dead zone" with 'Floratam' if it were sold this far north. Am confident we'll eventually have some sort of drought tolerant/low water use yard.... and still rooting for lawn over stone.

Would like buffalo grass (BG) in the sunny sections of the front, but the remaining traces of the original Bermuda grass in our turf, need for an additional hard edge against our neighbor's St Augustine/Bermuda, and the considerably more prominent dog urine damage dissuade me from more than a little experimentation for now. The photo of BG urine damage I posted previously shows it at its least noticeable during active growth. As the BG starts to go dormant, the damaged spots don't recover and the lawn begins looking much worse - I never thought to take a photo...well, because it just looked so bad. St Augustine will occasionally show a bit of urine burn, but is significantly better than BG at tolerating those concentrated N blasts from our female K9s.

One other confirmation of this relative pet "weakness" is that the source of our BG plugs now offers a hybrid Bermuda as their Dog Tuff product - though I'd still prefer the BG in our back yard.

Based on my experience (so I don’t make this a golden rule), Zoysia grass grows greener where the dogs pee.

Omar

Omar, Good to know.... the "dead zone" could be a great opportunity to give 'Palisades' a trial. Will look into it. Thanks.