[samjonester]

Hello! First real post here.

I'm new to South Jersey (Cherry Hill) and just bought my first house. My front yard is a bermuda + cool season mutt. It's full sun and has a decent slope, so I understand the idea of adding bermuda, but in practice, it really struggles this far north. I have a feeling it's some crappy common bermuda type to boot. I mostly just have a lawn that's half brown from October - June...

Ideally, I'd like to kill it all off and reseed the entire lawn, but I'm focusing the majority of my efforts on the back where we spend a large amount of time. Eventually, I'll do it, but that will be another topic when the time comes :lol:

The previous owners cut the bermuda + cool season mix twice monthly (I heard from a neighbor). That means that it was routinely between 10-12" and pretty leggy and thin at the ground. I've kept it around 2.5" with bi-weekly mows for the past year. After regular applications of Milo, an application of Scotts + Halts this spring, and a couple squirts of Weed B Gone, things are looking much thicker and healthier. This spring the bermuda was VERY thin. I saw a lot of promise from the KBG in the mix filling into it.

For the time being, what should I be doing to encourage the existing cool season grasses to compete better with the bermuda. I've got a couple ideas, but would love some more experienced opinions on them.

- Don't fertilize from June - August. I'd rather keep applying Milo, though. I'm starting to develop a nice domination line that I would hate to lose. Plus I imagine the soil could very much use the biostimulation.
- Apply a starter fertilizer this fall (maybe the end of September) when the bermuda is slowing down and the cool season grasses are picking up. This one seems a bit hairbrained, but would it work? Would a different fert that's just high in N be better?
- Apply PGR during the hot months. This one seems like the best idea, but feels intimidating to me. It will most likely be out of the budget as well with the work we're doing in the back.
- Apply an affordable post-emergent that happens to be disliked by bermuda and hope that I have enough cool season grass to avoid large bare spots? If it's just one that weakens it, might that be enough to allow the transition to happen a bit more naturally?
- Something else smart that I can't think of?

Thanks everyone!

 

[LawnNerd]

So with KBG your options on Herbicides are pretty limited to tackle the bermuda. I'm unfamiliar if Pylex is safe on KBG, and I know Fusilade II is not labeled for KBG.

Cultural practices will definitely slow it down, but on that note i'd do the following:

1)mow as high as you can to where the kbg isnt flopped over. The higher the better as itll shade out the Bermuda. Mowing low actually encourages Bermuda to spread, fyi.

2) Fertilize in Fall and early spring, and skip summer like you mentioned. Thats a good plan. However, you can get into humic acid if you want to help support / stimulate the bio activity of the soil.

3)pray for many cold / hard /snowless winters to kill the Bermuda in its one weak spot.

I'm on the fence about pgr. Yes, it'll help keep the kbg healthy in the summer, but pgr also encourages rhizome and stolon (above ground runners you see) growth thus spreading the bermuda. I think proper watering and mowing (+humics) will help you a lot to stave off summer stress to where you wont need pgr.

Your last resort is to nuke it all with glyphosate + Fusilade II (and do a few apps) and reseed. But a full reno is not for the faint of heart.

 

[samjonester]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I somehow stumbled on a video about pilex by @GrassDaddy and @thegrassfactor

which got me interested in doing more to actively discourage the bermuda... then I saw the price of the stuff. There's a ton out there for folks in the Carolinas or further south where it seems like that's a necessary evil to keep an elite mono stand of fescue strong against the neighbors bermuda.

That's actually why I decided to post this "repeat" topic. I'm so far north that even mowing lower, the bermuda never really thrived. It seemed to be a strong weed rather than an alpha grass all the way up here. If it was alpha I'd probably just encourage it as I like a low mowed bermuda lawn.

The humic acid sounds like an excellent idea! Can I mix some iron with it to keep the dark green color that is also a product of regular Milo applications?

As far as point 3. That doesn't seem to be the norm here. We had a cold snap for a few weeks that took us into the twenties (and teens a couple days), but our average in the winter seems to be 30s. The ground doesn't really freeze.

I spent the hot months last summer mowing at 4.25 with the same thought you had, but the bermuda seemed to grow like an umbrella and just expose a lot of the soil bed. Maybe the bermuda was just a bit thicker last summer, though.

 

[samjonester]

I just learned how to tell the difference between poa pratensis (KBG) and poa trivialis. It turns out the blue grass that I thought was filling in like a champ this spring... wasn't. Since I've got a couple years until I'm ready for a Reno in the front, I guess I'll experiment :lol:

Let's see if I can make bermuda work!

Just found a thread on ATY about growing bermuda nearby.https://aroundtheyard.com/forums2/viewtopic.php?t=22197

I'm directly west of Philly, and about 20 miles further south. I won't have the same cold tolerant bermuda species, so I I doubt I'll get the same results, but why not! Maybe it'll thin out the triv a bit.

My plan for this summer:
- this year feed the bermuda well and try to keep it watered. I'm going to give it a lot of Milo in the next few months. I may give it a kick of synthetic nitrogen now as well since it just started growing for the year.
- take the mower down a bit more. It's pretty uneven with lots of dips and valleys on my hill, so I'll probably have to stick around 2" until that's sorted out
- do a little bit of leveling this year if I can find the money and time.

I'm going to take pictures so we will see how bermuda can fair in New Jersey!

 

[chrisben]

Be carefull, you may never get rid of it. (and the guy down the street's lawn that has intermingled bermuda all over is bermuda-dead looking October-May)

 

[samjonester]

Now with pics! Mods should this get moved / renamed?

@chrisben I'd say it's well past that point :lol:

Mid February

I hadn't really done any weed control at this point. There are a couple sprigs of wild onion/garlic, but the green is what was left of the cool season in the mix after last summer. I mowed at 4.25 in July and August, and 2.5 the rest of the year. The HOC in the summer seemed to just make the bermuda leggy and sparse at the ground. When I lowered it back down, a lot of the soil bed was exposed.

End of March
I put down Scotts + Halts and have been giving it bag rate of Milo every month since.

End of April

At the end of April the bermuda started to green up. By that time the volume of cool season grass mixed in had probably trippled. I was pumped! That's what triggered the first post. I wish I had a better picture, but this gives you a good idea. I also put down my first post emergent application of Weed B Gone ever! It needed it. look at all those yellow flowers.

End of May (Today)

Don't mind the "holes" in the lawn. I got a bit impatient with Weed B Gone not killing some monster plantains, thistle, and prickly lettuce. I hit the things with round up, and it seems like i was a bit heavy-handed. Oh well, you learn something new every day! The bermuda seems to have filled in ~.5" into the spots already. The HOC is about 2.5" (mowed on Monday), and it's due for another mow tomorrow. The triv seems to greatly outpace anything else in the lawn.

 

[TN Hawkeye]

If you want the Bermuda to take over you can wait till winter when the Bermuda is 100% dormant and then hit the yard with glyphosate. It will not hurt the Bermuda as long as it is 100% dormant. May not do a lot with the poa but it will get the cool season grasses more under control. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Tsmith]

Are you sure it's Bermuda?

It doesn't sound like the previous owners really cared about their lawn so I wouldn't take their word for it if that's what you're going by.

I'm also in Cherry Hill and a lot of the lawns here are Zoysia which also goes dormant in the winter. If it is Bermuda though then that would obviously have been from a Reno at some point but not from Scott's or Trugreen as they usually use the standard contractor mix.

 

[social port]

I also think it is smart to verify the grass type.
It may very well be bermuda, but I can't find clear evidence for it in the pictures above.

 

[samjonester]

The February pics definitely make that seem like a good idea, @TN Hawkeye! I wonder if triv is dormant then, too, or if I could knock it out then. Glyphosate is actually affordable unlike revolver and the stuff those cool season folks use.

Nice thought on the zoysia, also, @Tsmith. I've got about a dozen houses near me with zoysia. It was easy to differentiate this spring when seed heads popped up. This is what the other lawns looked like: https://goo.gl/images/omZDba (not my pic)

Here's a better pic of the bermuda for a positive id. Hopefully it is sufficient!


And a couple more showing why I hate the triv :lol: I mowed yesterday and the triv looks gross, brown, and like I've got dull blades. I sharpen every other mow, though :shrug:

 

[samjonester]

FWIW @TN Hawkeye, the bermuda bible (https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1651) says that glyphosate on dormant bermuda might not do damage but it's a risky endeavor.

 

[alpine0000]

This spring the bermuda was VERY thin. I saw a lot of promise from the KBG in the mix filling into it.

Just a note: Bermuda, being a warm-season grass, will surely always be thin in the spring up north, as the temps aren't high enough yet for it to really wake up. Come mid/late-June through the end of August is when the Bermuda will really be thriving up in your area. It won't go away or thin out on it's own. It will likely spread a bit more each year, taking over your cool-season lawn. I had the same problem. I finally had enough and had to glyphosate my entire front/side lawn last year and start over. I'm going to keep it at bay with Pylex if it starts to make it's way back in (neighbors lawns have it).

 

[samjonester]

A TKO is definitely in my future @alpine0000. It's spread enough that I'll need to kill it all. That's a few years off, though. The inside of the new house and the back yard are the current priorities. At first I was hoping for a cheap way to encourage cool season grasses, but after realizing that most of the CS grass is poa, I'm think I will experiment with a natural bermuda take over. I'll see if I can encourage it and whether I like it, because right now it seems like the lesser of 2 evils.

I think right now I'm going to fertilize and mow for the bermuda. I am also researching cheap herbicides that would kill the cool seasons and debating whether the bermuda is thick enough that it won't look terrible. If selectively killing things is gonna leave me with half a lawn, then I'll just wait to kill stuff for a full reno

 

[alpine0000]

I def hear you on that. You gotta take the projects on one at a time!

The only bad thing about Bermuda for us up north is, like you said, your lawn is brown from about October to May. There isn't any way around that. As long as you don't mind a brown lawn more than half the year, then there's nothing wrong with encouraging the Bermuda.

 

[Suburban Jungle Life]

Maybe consider using celsius or certainty to get rid of all the cool season stuff including the triv. This will give the bermuda less competition and an easier time to spread since you have a shorter growing season.

 

[samjonester]

Here's an update.

The bermuda has really loved the hot weather recently! It's thickened up dramatically with the spring fertilizer, lower cut, and hot weather.



Notes:
- the Poa Trivialis is fading. That's the brown you see patched into the lawn. The green is mostly bermuda.
- yes my clippings are ridiculous. The triv grows SO MUCH FASTER! It was only 4 days since my last cut. The bermuda cut well, even the spots of fescue I have mixed in cut well at that interval. The triv seemed to grow about an inch a day this spring. My side discharging Lowe's special can't keep up with it. When I get a better mower (I've been eyeing a Honda), that will help too.
- My thatch later is a real bummer. I am waiting to take care of that until I have a mower that bags.

Here's a close up of a spot with super thick bermuda



Here's one that has a lot of triv



And finally one that highlights the difference. The top of the pic has triv the bottom doesn't.



What's next?
- Putting down fertilizer today - Vigoro Super Green. Old faithful (Milorganite) was still out at Home Depot, and this stuff was non burning, slow release, with iron. We'll see if it works. I do like the smaller bag and price better already!
- making my first application of PGR on the front lawn next week to (hopefully) help the bermuda choke out the triv some more as the summer heats up.

If this lawn gives me a couple more weeks of green on either side of the year with proper maintenance I might be happy with bermuda. We will see! If the late green up causes another triv take over next spring, I'll have to rethink that.