Next step, I installed irrigation throughout the back yard.

I then tilled it all up, leveled out the ground, spread centipede seed (which is unbelievably expensive), raked the seeds into the ground, and rolled the entire yard flat. Lastly I started it on a regular watering cycle.

A perfect start!

The problem is, since buying the house in late summer, and then doing all of the above, I didn't get the seed into the ground until the last week of August. So it only had a couple months of growing before going dormant. It grew faster than I expected, but just enough to make it through the winter. Very sparse still.

Flash forward to today - my back yard has been taken back over by weeds again this spring, mostly dandelion. But these dandelion are massive. I pulled many and the tap roots are huge. Since the grass didn't full fill in, it made it very easy for the weeds to come back.

My question is, with my centipede still very young and sparse to start out the growing season, when do I apply a fertilizer and apply a herbicide (if at all)? Don't I need to wait until the green-up is over? Or even longer until the centipede has started to really grow and fill in? Which should I apply first?

Do I want to get the weeds out first, allowing the grass to fill in easier? or will the herbicide hurt the young grass just greening up?

Or do I apply the fertilizer, let both the grass and weeds grow stronger, and then kill off the weeds once the grass can handle it?

It seems my situation isn't well discussed any place, because most people don't plant centipede seed late in the season. Thanks for any insight from someone who is probably over thinking this - it's just a shame to have a new house and not be able to enjoy the back yard!

Thanks.

http://www.clemson.edu/extension/hgic/plants/landscape/lawns/hgic1215. html

In three years your lawn will be so bumpy you can't mow the grass without scalping it. The perfect start would not have included rototilling. Just out of curiosity, who told you to rototill?

Centipede really needs no fertilizer. Mow it at your mower's lowest setting.

If you have not backed off on your watering schedule, it is time now. This time of year it should be getting about 1 inch per month. Water it all at one time unless you get rain. Then just make up the difference between the rain and 1 inch. At the hottest part of summer you can move up to watering every 7 days. Again water a full inch each time. By doing this you are allowing the weed seeds to dry out completely between waterings. Weed seeds need continual moisture to sprout. The worst thing you can do is to water a little bit every day.

Centipede does best in 5.2 to 5.8 PH level where fumes rise for the ground from acid and nothing else can grow. Once soil PH reaches 6.0 and higher it cannot compete with anything else that comes along.

In three years your lawn will be so bumpy you can't mow the grass without scalping it.

This is nonsense. The OP did not give you enough information about the tilling he did to support this statement.

Read the link provided above, don't fertilize right now, and try to get the weeds under control, and see how things look. You might want to consider reseeding, without rototilling, around July 1. It's not always easy establishing a centipede lawn from seed in a single season, especially with your late start.

Q: In three years your lawn will be so bumpy you can't mow the grass without scalping it. The perfect start would not have included rototilling. Just out of curiosity, who told you to rototill?

Re tilling, after raking up all of the dead weeds from the glyphosphate, my local landscaper told me I needed to till up the ground before spreading the centipede seeds, then roll it flat afterwards to get good contact. The lawn is already flattened out, so I'm not worried about scalping. I was watering a little every other day, so I will back off and water more heavily, and less frequently. Thanks for the tip on letting the weeds dry out.

Q: Why did you pick Centipede? Is your soil acidic?

Every other yard in the subdivision (50+ homes) has centipede so I didn't want to be the one yard that sticks out over the winter, when everyone else has a brown yard. I sent my soil off to UGA and it came back with a PH of 5.6.

I guess I'm going to keep mowing everything frequently, weeds and all until May, at which point I will attack the weeds first with some herbicides. I kind of expected a few seasons until the centipede matured, so no surprise there. I will think about reseeding a little in July, but centipede seed is so damn expensive that I wish I would have just sodded and not have to deal with all of this hassle (since I'm not saving much anyways).

Thanks again for the comments all. I'm a long time lurker that gets a lot of advice from searching the posts in this forum, as I hope this one helps someone else in the future.

OK then you only have one choice; Centipede. No other grass can grow in that acidic of soil.

I would not take his advice on lawns for anything. This is what real landscapers use. The tool on the back of the tractor is a box blade. It resurfaces the soil without digging it up and leaves a perfect surface for planting seed or sod.

Did you actually rent a hand held rototiller or did you have someone with a tractor till it? There is a tractor attachment for tilling and that does a good job. The hand held tillers always lead to a bumpy surface after settling.

I also rented an big metal roller that you fill with water and went over the entire yard for 4 passes, 2 east/west and 2 north/south. It doesn't seem to be TOO awful bumpy, but it definitely isn't as smooth as your picture above.

I bought some herbicide and pre-emergent today and will apply both this week and see what effect it has on the dandelions.

I've also decided I'm giving it this growing season to see what I can do, and if it doesn't look like I can get the weeds somewhat under control and the centipede to grow, I'm just going to blow it all up and have it sodded (like I should have done from the start)!!!

I'l post pictures in a few weeks of the spring greenup.

Thanks all!