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| I am in Prosper, Tx (just north of Dallas) and live in a new community. The sod was laid last summer so it is now a year old. We thought we would have gorgeous bermuda grass by now since it gets so much sun now due to the fact that all the trees are small, but the grass looks terrible. No matter how much we water, it looks dry and just slightly green. Our neighbors grass all looks like ours as well. we have recently been told it is because the builder laid the sod directly on top of the soil without ammending it. We have almost solid clay here. We were told that because of this, all the water the grass is given just runs off into the street because clay doesn't soak it up very good. We do have a lot of water in our street and sidewalks when we water. Does this sound like it could actually be our problem? If so, is there a solution? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by nearandwest 7 (My Page) on Mon, Jun 13, 11 at 18:23
| 1. Have you had your soil tested? 2. Have you applied any fertilizer or lime since the sod was installed? 3. Did you apply any weed and feed product this past spring? 4. How tall or short do you mow your lawn? 5. Other than mowing or watering, have you done anything to your lawn? 5. Can you post a picture for us to see? Answers to these and other questions will provide a starting point for recommendations. |
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| Here are the answers to the questions: 1. Have you had your soil tested? No, not sure when/how to do that. 2. Have you applied any fertilizer or lime since the sod was installed? Yes, we have fertilized. My husband fertilized the yard once last year and twice so far this year. We have never applied any lime. 3. Did you apply any weed and feed product this past spring? My husband fertilized in the spring and he applied a pre-emergent in the spring, but he has never used a weed and feed product. 4. How tall or short do you mow your lawn? Not really sure but husband said he thinks the mower is on the second to lowest setting. 5. Other than mowing or watering, have you done anything to your lawn? Just the fertilizer and pre-emergent 6. Can you post a picture for us to see? I would love to, but I've tried many times to post pics on gardenweb forums and I've never been successful. I clearly can't figure it out. I would love some input on how to begin to get our yard to look good. |
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- Posted by nearandwest 7 (My Page) on Tue, Jun 14, 11 at 9:56
| Ok, so we'll need more information if you don't mind. 1. Do you remember what fertilizer you used and approximately when you used it? ( Was it 16-4-8, or 10-10-10, 39-0-0 or something like that) And how much of it did you use on how much area? (Did you use one 50 lb. bag on 4,000 sq.ft., or something like that). 2. What pre-emerge herbicide was used and what rate? As much detailed information as possible will really be helpful. |
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- Posted by dchall_san_antonio 8 San Antonio (My Page) on Tue, Jun 14, 11 at 11:29
| Water in the streets is definitely a problem. Once you have runoff, you may as well stop watering because every single drop coming out after that is going down the drain. Try this: Water for 10 minutes and let that soak in for 30. Then water for as long as you can until it starts to run off again. If you can repeat this until you get a full hours worth of water IN to the soil, you should be in good shape for the next 7 days. If you cannot get the water to penetrate, you can try spraying a combination of baby shampoo and molasses on the lawn right before you irrigate. Both the shampoo and molasses will change the surface tension of the water and allow the irrigation water to penetrate deeper. Do the 10 minute/30 minute thing again and do not water once you see runoff. If you spray the soap and molasses every time you water for the next month it should change the nature of your clay soil so that it will accept water normally in the future. We can help you post a picture. First you have to have the picture hosted online somewhere. Do you have a Photobucket (or Picasa or other online photo storage) account? If so then find your picture, right click on the photo itself, select Copy Image Location, and post it here. I can do the rest. The text should look like If it does not start with http and end with .jpg, then you did something wrong. Everything else in the middle will depend on your hosting site. |
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| I hate that I can't give you the answers you need!! I have checked the garage and confirmed what I thought. We used all of the fertilizer on our last application about 3 weeks ago so the bag is gone and I don't remember what it was. I do know for sure that it was not a 39-0-0, the 3 numbers were not the same numbers, and none of the numbers were 0. I also don't have any idea what pre emergent we used. It is also long gone. I found the Bermuda bible after several hours on this site last night. Can I just cut our grass really short and start with the bible with what he says to be doing in June? I do need to get the water issue fixed though. Right now, we are watering 3 times a week for 20 minutes. We just increased it because we thought our problem was not enough water, and because my husband put our tuna cans to measure how much water the yard was getting. And I guess our problem may be not enough water if it isn't being absorbed. To give you an idea, yesterday I was trying to water our trees. I laid the hose on the ground on a fairly slow rate, but not just dripping. I left the water on for about 30 minutes. The result? The water had run all the way from our backyard down the side of our front yard and was running down the street. It is about 130 feet from where the tree is to the front sidewalk with bermuda grass the entire way, and it was about 100 degrees here yesterday. I think I'll try the soap thing and see if that makes a difference. I'm also going to try to post a picture but Im not holding my breath that I will get it to work! |
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| dchall - How do I mix the shampoo and molasses? What ratio should it be? |
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- Posted by texas-weed 7A (My Page) on Tue, Jun 14, 11 at 15:54
| What ever you do, DO NOT ADD LIME as Dallas soils are heavy black clay, with high PH. If you add Lime you will raise the PH even higher. If anything you would add sulfur to bring down the PH. Do not do anything to correct PH now as it is the least of your concerns. Also at this time do not lower the cutting height as it is just too hot and late in the year to do that. Your problem is quite common in the Dallas area. The heavy black gumbo clay is both a blessing and curse. IT is a rich soil and when irrigated properly will retain moisture for quite a while and pretty easy to maintain proper moisture levels with regular irrigation. However when it dries out, it shrinks up, cracks, and gets hard as a brick. Ever notice there are a lot of adds in Dallas for foundation repair? As David points out you are going to have to the soil saturated again. Once that is done then regular watering will maintain the proper moisture levels. As Dave mentioned you can water for 10 minutes or so until you see run-off, stop, wait, then repeat several times but this could take a few days. Another method which maybe more convenient is to use a soaker hose in a given area. Then move it to another area. Again it will take a few days to get the job done. But until you can get moisture down to 6 to 8 inches it will be September before the cooler wetter weather and green grass returns. Another good idea to combat the problem is to core aerate your lawn, and top dress with a good coarse builders sand a couple times per year for the next season or two to help break up the clay a bit and allow water to penetrate easier. In addition start following the Bermuda Bible, but not not take the grass down any further until you get the water problem under control. Right now about 1.5 inches is your target cutting height. |
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- Posted by nearandwest 7 (My Page) on Tue, Jun 14, 11 at 23:43
| aggierose, I would say that right now, the best thing you can do is to core aerate your lawn, remove the cores that sit on top of the ground, and then topdress with a coarse sand. You are still going to need a soil test to determine the needs of your soil in terms of nutrient requirements and any pH adjustments. Good luck. |
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| It seems to me that core aeration will be darned near impossible if the soil is as dry as it sounds. I agree that it needs to be done but slow watering may be the first order of business. I lived in Sherman for 13 years and had that black gumbo soil. I strongly suggest that you start out with those soaker hoses near your house foundation. If nothing else is green, at least keep the turf green near your foundation. Oh, and if your screen name means what I think it does, Gig 'em! |
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| Yes David, my husband and I are both Aggies. Class of '96! My grass is fairy green so I think I may have unintentionally mislead you a little. It just has a lot of spots that look dry, but more than that is the fact that is just isn't anywhere near being lush and thick. Very thin, and in many spot is just very dry and looks like it hasn't had water in weeks even though it has had plenty. I know it must be a soil issue simply because our neighbors all struggle with their yards as well. I'm going to try to get it soaked really well, and aerate too. I would like to get it leveled too. The builders just laid the sod without leveling a thing and we are left with the bumpiest yard I've ever seen. I just mowed it and sometimes it's hard to even control the mower because it ends up bouncing so much because of all the little hills! |
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- Posted by nearandwest 7 (My Page) on Wed, Jun 15, 11 at 10:23
| aggierose: If you haven't done so already, you may want to look at the thread in this forum titled "My Experiences Leveling My Lawn With Sand" that was started on April 26, 2011. There is some good information in there with pictures that may be helpful to you. |
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- Posted by texas-weed 7A (My Page) on Wed, Jun 15, 11 at 10:40
| Those dry areas are likely just that where the soil is heavily compacted or maybe even hard-pan. Get everything soaked, core aerate, and start leveling off with Builders sand aka masonry sand. And do not forget to fertilize every 30 days. |
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- Posted by dchall_san_antonio 8 San Antonio (My Page) on Thu, Jun 16, 11 at 9:55
| I just mowed it and sometimes it's hard to even control the mower because it ends up bouncing so much because of all the little hills! Yup! That is a poster-child bumpy lawn. Leveling it will fix that. Okay I've been replying to several messages for the past hour and realize aggierose has been the OP for several of them. I am getting the bigger picture now. Good to know you are in the DFW area and have bermuda. Wasn't sure on some of the replies, so had to keep it sort of general. How you mix shampoo and molasses is not critical. I pour some molasses in and try to match that amount with the soap - roughly 50/50. I did some pioneering work in soaker hose soil softening several years ago. My intent was to devise a way to soften the soil without a core aerator. The soaker works very well, but it can take you all summer if you do it the way I would suggest. Last year I decided to try using baby shampoo and it worked great. In fact I will probably never use a soaker hose again. I definitely will never use a core aerator again. |
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