Backyard shot

one of the worst areas in the back

up close leaf

Pic of the raised dirt and turf

Front yard. The outer brown edges are where i have been mowing it at 2 1/4 with the push reel. The inner part is still 3"

Better close up of leaf blades

So, do i water? Fertilize? Cut it low? raise the height? More fungicide? Corn meal it? Leave it alone?

1. You can use corn meal as a fertilizer; however, since you have already used a fungicide, the corn meal won't work help with the fungus. The corn meal relies on a predatory fungus, which the fungicide just killed off.
2. No more fungicide until the daily high temps fall below 85. If you go back to your bottle, it probably says that on it. You may have killed your lawn with the fungicide.
3. You should be watering once per week a full inch at a time. If Mother Nature is doing that for you, then no more water from you. Daily rain can do what your lawn has.
4. You need to get the mowing height down. The reason the grass looks brown now when you mow lower is that you are cutting off the entire blade. Bermuda grass blades grow out from a stem. If you shorten the stems, the grass gets lower. At a certain point, the stems will begin to grow horizontally instead of vertically. That's when bermuda becomes pretty magnificent.
5. You should be fertilizing bermuda with a high N product every month during the growing season.

Do you think a good plan would be to knock it all down to 2"(most is at 3"), fertilize, water deeply weekly, mow every couple of days trying to get down a little lower? Do you think there is enough time left for everything to green up and start thickening up before dormancy?
Also, my push reel cant get it all ar 2". Should I hit it with my rotary at 2" or get my new mclane on it at 1 1/4" and brown the entire lawn out?

Fertilize and water first. You want the grass growing when you scalp it down. When you mow it back to 2 inches from 3, you will have mostly stems. Stems look brown because you're looking past the thin stems and seeing the dirt below.

If it is 3 inches now, mowing at 2 will remove 1/3 of the growth. I would mow, fertilize, and water now. In 3 days mow again at the same height. Three days later lower the blade 1/4 inch and mow again. Three days later mow again at that same height. Three days later lower the blade to 1.5 inches and mow again. Oh and water in there whenever 7 days rolls around from your first watering. If you don't have that much control over your mower height, you can go at 1/2-inch intervals.

Since your lawn was rototilled you are going to experience the surface becoming bumpy. It will take about 3 years for the surface to stop getting bumpier. I would hesitate to do anything about leveling the lawn until you are sure it isn't getting worse. The problem with continually leveling is that soil is continually settling. If you level with 1/4-inch of sand and do it 4 times, you would have raised your surface a full inch. If you wait until the settling is over, you may only raise it 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Raising the surface is fine if you have a golf course, but if you have a house with a basement and you add an inch of topsoil around it, you can divert the rainfall back up into the house.

Thanks dchall. I mowed down to 2" wih the rotary. Put down milagornite(do you think that will be a good fert?) After pulling some mpre stems and researching I believe I have either dollar spot or brown patch. One disease says to fert the other says not too or it may get worse. So I figured the milorganite might be a little easier on the turf if I guessed wrong. Watered deeply after. This week I went 7 days between the last rain and watering and I think i was on the verge of losing it. My soil is really sandy here in FL plus Im near the coast so do you think watering every 4-5 days would work? Also do you think the disease might let up with the fungicide treatment and mowin plan? Im almost positive its DS or BP. Although pythium seemed to match alot of the symptoms. Anyways I will stick to the plan and I greatly appreciate your advice.

backyard after mowing fert and water

The saving grace is you have bermuda. All you need is one sprig to survive and you'll have a full lawn of it soon enough ;-)

Milorganite is good. I don't use it but a lot of people I respect do.

Well the day I mowed and watered of course it rained that night and all the next day and today. Lawns looking pretty rough. Kind of taking on an orangeish look. And it's looking like rain for the rest of the week. It's not looking like I'm gonna win this battle. Anything else I should do?

Patience.
It takes longer to undo the damage (healing) than it does to do the damage in the first place.
If that makes any sense.

Yes. Makes sense. It's just getting frustrating with all this rain. Alot of the dead grass is layed over and matted down. Do you think I should rake out all the dead brown stuff or let it be.

Yes, rake it out. You want direct sunlight on the soil. Compost it and use it somewhere else. Or put it on the lawn once it is growing again.

Bermuda is AMAZINGLY resilient, but like they said, patience grasshopper! I had a place that looked desolate. Only 1/4 of the yard had bermuda. I watered daily, and next year, almost completely filled out as the dormant roots below came back to life. It took a couple weeks for me to see noticeable results, but time was on my side. I never needed seed either. Now, two years later, it's work to keep it under control! You also may be looking at the remains of a pior winter grass in some areas. It's very popular where I live in AZ to plant rye in the winter when the bermuda goes dormant when the weather chills at night. A good pre-emergent will keep the weeds down two. Use it about three times a years. Unless you like plucking weekly! :p

You're almost there!

Here is a link that might be useful: Florida burmuda

Thanks everyone. I will repost in a couple weeks for a progress report.

I understand your pain. I live in SoCal and my Tifgreen Bermuda was hating life this year :( I tried "everything" added topsoil, dethatch, aerate, fertilizer and nothing :(
I took a snapshot of the lawn and went to a nursery store, they said it was diseased so treat it! Still nothing :( Ran a soil test and everything came out ok.
Well i almost gave up for this year until i decided to give "Scotts Natural Lawn Food" a try as this was working pretty well in my backyard. I took a 4x4 ft area in my front lawn as a sample area to try.
I added ALOT of the pellets to the ground and "SMASHED" /worked the pellets into the soil using a small hand cultivator and a week later i got "green" grass :D
Why this product worked? I do not know why but i tried everything else with zero success until i tried this product from Scotts... Hope this helps.

PE sanchez, it could be your soil was unhealthy for some reason causing the lawn to crash. Adding the organic lawn food replenished the food supply for the soil microbes. In order to keep this from happening, I often suggest that bermuda owners use organic feed at least once per year. Find the Bermuda Bible online and follow that guidance. My only critique of that guide is that it does not suggest occasional organic fertilizer.

You would have similar experience with any organic fertilizer or even from just applying cheap dry dog food. There is a remarkable similarity between animal feed and organic fertilizers.

You should not have to aerate, dethatch, or add topsoil. If you water deeply once per week, and fertilize monthly, bermuda should be happy. Where are you in SoCal? It makes a huge difference if you are in San Clemente versus, say, Upland.

Better close up of leaf blades

{{!gwi}}