You can still try to roll it but because you tilled it, you will be fighting it (and weeds) for a long time. Next year you can start the leveling process with sand. Tilling is almost never a good idea (almost). I have replaced many sections of my Bermuda like you did. I simply wacked it down as low as I could. Rolled it before and after.

Did you use 419 OR TifGrand? They aren't the same (as far as I know). I put down a pallet of TG last year where I continually fight shade. I'm not happy with it. The previous 419 did just as well...or as poorly, depending on your perspective. Next time I will try TifSport per Texas-Weed (a well regraded member here).

Next- GET A SOIL TEST! That will tell you what you need to add to improve your soil.

So it turns out there is a UGA extension office located a few miles from me and they do soil testing. I'll be doing this next. Thanks for the advice. I guess I'll have to research what I need to do after I get the results.

I hate to sound uncharitable but you started making mistakes right away and then piled them up upon each other. The first mistake was expecting bermuda to awaken from dormancy before the soil warmed up. At the time the best thing you could have done is to apply a full inch of water to it all at one time, do nothing else for a month, and then repeat. Eventually you would have seen the grass green up. It might not have been until May but it would happen. Then by now you should have had a real good start on full coverage.

Who were the people who told you to rototill? Were they family, friends, neighbors, vegetable gardeners, nursery people, box store employees, or someone else? It some times is good to get a handle on who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't. Whoever it was doesn't know about prepping soil for a lawn. Tilling will be a headache for the next three years or so. The roller is not used to level the soil. It is used to get good contact between the sod and the soil. Roots cannot grow through air to reach the soil underneath. The rototilled soil is fluffy and must settle before you can really level it. Come back in 3 years for advice on how to fix the scalping. The tilling is likely the reason your sod is high above the rest of the yard.

Before you go for the UGA soil test, how much does it cost? What all do they test for? Please take a look at the Logan Labs website. For $20 they do a soil test that most labs cannot duplicate unless they charge a lot more. Stop your lawn care people and use half of the next treatment to send your sample to Logan Labs.

You can follow the Bermuda Bible and do your own lawn maintenance.

What is crazy is that this is the first time anyone has said NOT to till the soil. I had neighbors, friends, family, employees at Pikes Nursery, and even the sod company ALL say that I needed to till the soil because it was so compacted. Not a single person ever said anything about NOT tilling the yard.

I'm debating digging up the sod tomorrow and trying to repair some of what I've done somehow. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, but it honestly looks stupid right now and I don't want to deal with a lumpy yard if I can help it. If I can dig it up, sooth the uneven spots and then put the sod back down then I will. I've been reading the Bermuda Bible more and more and I feel like I could easily tackle the maintenance.

The reason I chose to put sod down is because that part of the yard was completely bare and every time it rained I had a yard of mud which was washing down into the street. I felt that I had no choice if I wanted to prevent any further erosion.

The problem with tilling is that the soil will eventually settle again and it won't be even. That's a big problem if you're mowing at 1/2 inch with a reel mower. It's not as much of a problem if you're mowing at 1.5 inches with a rotary. At the lower mowing height, you'll get a lot of scalping with the uneven settling.

You only tilled a few weeks ago and the soil has only begun to settle. If it were me, I'd leave well enough alone for now. You could pull up the sod but you aren't going to be able to compact the soil back to its normal state. It's still going to settle on you.

My advice is to follow the Bermuda Bible this year and mow at 1.5 inches or so. Wait until next spring to start the sanding/leveling process.

Hold the bus guy and quit trying to find a quick fix. All you are doing is making things worse and delaying progress. Yes you screwed up by tilling. To fix compacted soil you use a plug aerator and top dressing with sand or a sand/peat mix.

So let's get you on the road to recovery. First read and understand what the bible is telling you to do. But you need some additional steps to speed recover.

What I suggest you do right now is get you some good ole 10-10-10 or 10-20-10 fertilizer and spread it over all the grass at a rate of 10-lbs/Kf2 of product.

Then immediately following the fertilizer top-dress with a very coarse sand to level things out. Not so much you bury the grass, but enough to allow you to correct the surface roughness.

In about a month you will see a huge improvement and you will be on the road to recovery.

I have to admit that my impatience is probably what got me into this mess. Now I see why tilling could make things worse. I wish SOMEBODY would have told me this before I did it. One of my biggest concerns right now is the fact that the sodded part of the yard is now at a higher level than the original yard. I don't think that even after settling that it will look right.

texas-weed: Are you suggesting to top dress the entire yard or just the sodded area? Looks like I'll be purchasing a spreader and some fertilizer tonight. Am I only going to make things worse if I try to remove some of the soil under the sod or should I just leave it alone and live with my screw up?

I also had a raised portion where I replanted using the TiffGrand. I simply used coarse sand along the edges to "feather" the variation in height. After a year you can't really tell. I'll post a pic when I get home.

For the area you didn't replace, get a bottle of Bonide liquid iron from Pike:
http://www.amazon.com/Bonide-Liquid-Iron-Concentrate-Quart/dp/B0015I6ZW8
The label will have the dillution ratio. TW recommends this over the Ironite product. I've used it to help the "green up" process quite sucessfully.

texas-weed: Are you suggesting to top dress the entire yard or just the sodded area?

Whatever the lower spots are, and in between the seams of the new sod. Is it the new sod area that is low?

Am I only going to make things worse if I try to remove some of the soil under the sod or should I just leave it alone and live with my screw up?
Leave it be. You are going to have to be patient. This is not a quick fix and it will take this season and next to get where you want.

If you want a quick fix, roll up the sod, hire a contractor with a tractor and box blade to regrade the whole area, lay your old sod down, and buy more sod to finish the rest of the area.

Stop freaking out and be patient. You can work and fix what you have but it will take time. Do the top dress thing incrementally. By the end of June things will look better. The tilled area will start to settle some. Once you get the rough grade this season, then you can topdress the whole yard to get rid of the lumps and bumps to even things out.

Here's the area I repaired last year w/ TG:
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff260/wrager46/Spring2011006-1.jpg

and here it is today:
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff260/wrager46/photo2.jpg

My issue with TG is further down the hill, no better than previous experience with 419:
http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff260/wrager46/DSCN1859.jpg

Sorry, the lighting got bad.

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Thanks for the pics Rager. I was debating between standard 419 and the TG and figured the extra $50 might be worth it. I guess we shall see.

Texas-weed: Sorry for all the questions, just trying to learn. You recommend using 10-10-10 fertilizer. Does it matter that I have had two previous applications by the lawn care company (called them yesterday and cancelled my agreement with them). They were planning on fertilizing this week but they didn't say what they were going to use. I plan on picking something up this morning. Thanks again for the advice. Wish I had come here first rather than listen to everyone else.

To answer your other question texas-weed, I'm concerned that the existing yard is lower than the new sod. This is one of the reasons why I have put a sand/topsoil mix at the edges of the sod hoping that the elevation difference will fade just as Rager did in the pictures above.

Lol...hey rager, is that a clover lawn next door to you in that first most recent picture?

...no it is a foreclosure. Both sides of me, but hey the economy is turning around. Right....

Lol

So here we are one month later, and I wanted to post an update and also ask for further advice. The pics below were taken right after a mowing and a heavy rain a few days ago. As you can see, the sod clearly needs some leveling done. I have a rotary mower and it was set at the second to lowest height setting so that I could see how bad the leveling was.

I have been following the bermuda bible advice for the entire yard and the grass does appear to be improving. My question now is regarding leveling of the new sod. Should I attempt to level this season? Or should I wait until next season? I found a course all-purpose sand at HD which I would say is more like crushed stone than your standard play sand.

Yes, I know I messed up with the sod. I listened to all the wrong advice BEFORE coming here. Now I just want to fix my screw up. And I understand it will take time.

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Did the blade actually hit the ground anywhere?

What I see in the pics is bermuda that has been maintained too tall, and then suddenly cut lower. I don't necessarily see a leveling problem.

A lot of what you are seeing there could be remedied by starting the season off with a scalping the lowest the mower will cut without hitting dirt at first sign of green up. And maintain at that height or one notch up from there on. Possibly moving up a notch progressively throughout the season if the grass starts showing scalping.

Thanks for the reply. No, the blade never actually hit the ground at any point. I have tried to change the direction that I mow the sod each time just to get a feel for where the low spots are.

I walked around last night barefoot just to see if I could tell where the low spots were and they are mostly in the green patches seen in the pictures above. They aren't severe, but they are there. I may just try to do some gradual leveling with sand throughout the rest of this season and then do the scalping/leveling at the start of the next warm season.

I've read this thread: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/lawns/msg0411310416637.html

And I'm curious if April is really the best time to do leveling or should it really be done at the peak growing season, between June or July?

All of my sanding has been done in early spring for a couple of reasons.

First, it's a lot of work and it's cooler in early spring.

Second, the lawn won't look very good after sanding and it already doesn't look very good in early spring. In fact, I found that the white sand encouraged a quicker green up. I attributed that to the extra sunlight reflected off the white sand.

In your particular case, waiting until spring will allow the tilled ground to do more settling. It doesn't make much sense to level something that's only going to sink on you.

Leveling with sand should be done when the bermuda is actively growing, which is now.

Scalping should be done in April during Spring greenup.

You would not be hurting anything right now to go ahead and do a full scale sand leveling of your lawn. You have plenty of time for the bermuda to fill in and recover. Are you using a high nitrogen fertilizer every 30 days?

david_tx - Thanks for the advice. I tend to agree with you and maybe by then I'll have a better idea of how I am going to tackle the sand leveling. It seems that most of the 'professionals' around here use river sand although many people on this site have said that a coarse sand should be used instead. I suppose doing it myself is probably going to yield the best results. My guess is that the front yard is around 3,000 sq ft and the back yard is tiny. My lot is shaped like a triangle so the front is much larger than the back.

nearandwest - Yes, I have been using a high nitrogen fertilizer at a rate of 1 lb per 1,000 sq ft as recommended. I believe this is helping the existing grass maintain a darker color although a lot of the yard still needs to thicken up.

I'm trying to cut the grass shorter in order to encourage the thickening of the bermuda, but it looks like the sod will have to be cut longer until it is leveled.

I had mine done 2 weeks ago. It's almost completely green now. Same bad areas in the TifGrand though.

rager_w - Do you have any recent pics? Any complaints about the quality of the sand? What problems are you having with the TifGrand? Still not
holding up well in those shady areas?

I'm not sure I can convince the wife to pay a professional leveling company to do it this year so maybe next. She is already frustrated enough with the fact that I'm obsessing over the lawn and she knows how upset I am about the screw up with the tilling, etc. Live and learn I suppose.

Well I figured it was time for an update. Here are some pics of the yard as of this past weekend. I have been following the Bermuda Bible and doing all of the work myself. I went from the worst yard in the neighborhood to one of the better ones. I have had several neighbors compliment how great the grass looks compared to before. Next spring/summer I will be leveling and then I'll be able to cut it a lower length. I know it's not perfect, but compared to what it was when I moved in the difference is night and day.

Thanks for all the help that everyone has provided.

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Very nice! Can you elaborate on how you went from all the brown spots (July 12) to this? How much are you watering? How many applications of what fertilizer?

This is a great thread, lots of info here.

The brown spots were simply scalping as a result of me mowing at a lower level and the fact that the new sod isn't exactly level. I raised the mower up one notch and it fixed the problem. I have been mowing at the slightly higher level since then and will lower it back down after I level the yard next year.

I honestly haven't needed to water very much. We have been fortunate enough in metro Atlanta to get the occasional rain storm so I've only watered when we have had several days of no rain.

For fertilizer I have been using Sta-Green Lawn Fertilizer which is 29-0-5 and is supposed to be slow release. I use an entire 14 lb bag since my rough estimate is that 14 lbs is just enough to provide 1 pound of nitrogen per 1K sq ft of grass. I have been applying this every 4 weeks and it really appears to be working.

How often do you mow? Do you think that impacts the appearance?

I've been trying to mow about twice a week. If there is one thing I've learned over the past couple of months it's that waiting too long between mowing is one of the worst things you can do with bermuda.

Most of my neighbors pay people to mow their yards, so it's always done at most once a week, or once every two weeks so their yards always look scalped and brown. I'm really looking forward to the leveling next year because I know that the lower I mow the thicker the grass will become.

I was talking to my next door neighbor a few weeks ago and he said that the guy who lived in my house before it foreclosed hardly ever mowed the grass and never did any kind of lawn maintenance. This would explain why the grass was so patchy and thin and also why there were two large areas in the yard that had no grass which resulted in serious erosion of the top layer of clay/soil and I have a brown driveway to show for it.

BTW samlawn, I noticed that we live in the same part of Cobb Co. :)

Here we are today. I'm cutting a little longer during these hot days. The TifGrand still won't do much in the shady areas.

419 Tiffway Sport Help - bare spots and areas that look dead. This was sodded last year, looked great last year. This year it does not. I have followed the Bermuda bible steps but need some help.

HI DSM_in_Atlanta, where can i find this bermuda bible? I am having my own problems with my turf and am getting to the point that I am thinking about working on it on my own.

Thanks for all of your posts and pictures. I know this is now 3 years old, but it is certainly encouragement for me.

Start yourself a new thread if you haven't already & the bermuda bible is posted several places on the web. Somebody will probably post you a link