What soil type do you have?

The native soil is clay, but when the house was built I brought in a few inches of landscape soil and tilled it in. No tilling or amending was done when we put in the Tifgrand in this past spring--just some grading and leveling.

Take a screw driver and probe around in the soil 4 to 6 inches down. Bet it is dry as a bone.

texas-weed, I just did that and it's moist at the 4-6 inch level, but that could be slightly skewed though since we had some rain last night. What's strange is that we had record rainfall throughout June and the first part of July and it started its color decline shortly after that. I read your Bermuda Bible last night and did the walk test. It seems to spring back just fine.

I can't wait to find out what the resolution to this is. You're doing everything right and it's brown. Theoretically you have not been fertilizing often enough, but then the grass should only be light green, not brown.

What fertilizer did you use each time you used it?

And what software did you use to join your three pictures like that?

dchall_san_antonio, I've got call into my landscape guy to see what he put down. When I asked him what he thought a couple weeks ago, he said that he probably hasn't fertilized enough and that the heavy rains we got in June and July washed away the minimal nutrients that were there.

According to the Bermuda Bible it appears that I haven't been putting down near enough Nitrogen. Are you saying that if that were the culprit it would be light green, not brown?

I used photoshop to put the 3 images together, but almost any image editing software should be able to do the same (photoshop elements, paintshop, photoscape, etc.)

Wrong grass for your area and site there, Pal. Most warm season grasses this far north need full sun to perform satisfactory. Six hours of sunlight for Bermuda is like 1 hour of sunlight for Fescue.

Also, your dogs are going to trash the Bermuda once it goes dormant and there's nothing you can do about it until the following summer.

Tifgrand will hang in the shade, but will never look like when it came from the farm. You will have very open soil with some blades of bermuda.

No grass other than astroturf will be able to handle constant dog traffic on a daily basis.

auteck, I see your point in certain parts of the yard that get far less sun and have thinned as a result. But I'm skeptical that that's the culprit for the browning grass since there are other areas of the yard that get 8 hours of sun per day and it looks the same. My main issue is browning, not so much thinning. Are you saying that not enough sun can cause the browning?

Did you till the soil prior to install?

These warm season grasses are very sensitive to daylight, we have been loosing 2 to 3 mins per day since June 21st.

I am going to tag along in this thread.

I am also in the Raleigh area. I fired my landscaping company and bought a mower.

My neighbor across the street's grass looked better than mine, and he was doing it on his own. His is real short and tight, but full and thick and green. Mine is thin, brown and overall just doesn't look that good.

Mine was really tall and bushy, so I started to slowly lower my blade every week and this is where I am now.

What's the deal?

auteck, it was tilled (maybe 3-4" deep) when the sod was put down (I think I mis-spoke in an earlier post). The landscaper said this was primarily to loosen it up so that it could be graded smooth. It was tilled much deeper and amended with soil when we built the house in 2004.

@Acinomer: Looks like scalping and/or shade issues.

This post was edited by grasshole on Thu, Aug 15, 13 at 10:55

@benmackie: You may be too late to lower the mower this year.

Otherwise, next year copy your neighbor. Don't get creative. If you like his results, and you have the same grass, copy him.

Water it, get some water on it and some fertilizer with bio-solids asap if you haven't already. Mow as short and frequent as possible without scalping. Do not use pre-emergents this year or even next summer so it can root in properly. Raise the tree canopy as much as possible to allow more sunlight to reach the ground, enlarge mulched/flower beds where deep shade dominates.

Hmmmm.......let me join the Raleigh connection. I live in Holly Springs, NC so basically the same area.

I have tifway bermuda and my grass looks pretty good. I am no bermuda expert but I will tell you what I am thinking based off of living in the same area.

@ acinomer, from what I have read Bermuda needs to be watered in frequently (once a week) in order to allow the roots to go deeper in search of water. This year, your yard has been spoiled because we have had a ridiculous amount of rain all summer. I think I have ran my sprinklers twice all year and that was in May I believe so I could water in some fertilizer. It has really warmed up the last 2 or 3 weeks. I'm wondering if your yard got used to all of the rain and with it being new, the roots haven't started to go deep enough.

A couple of questions. What sort of fertilizer have you been using, how ofter do you mow it, and at what height? You definitely are not fertilizing it enough so that could be part of it.

@benmackie, I can almost guarantee you that trying to gradually cut it shorter is what messed up your yard.

{{gwi:108916}}

That is a picture I took after I went out of town for the 4th of July and cut my grass when I returned. The grass had grown so much that I had to raise the blade two settings so it wouldn't look bad. In the picture, you can see the grass on the left is shorter with some brown spots. I cut my grass a couple of days apart just so I could lower it one setting. It didn't look all that good and it took at least two weeks for it to look decent again. Even though I wanted to lower it one more setting, I didn't because I wasn't willing to endure the recovery time. I wouldn't lower your blade anymore. If anything, raise it a little bit and maybe you can get it looking good before it goes dormant.

Ok so I messed up by cutting too short.

How do I recover? It has barely grown in two weeks, but has greened up a tad, but not much. Have I done permanent damage?

I am actually in holly springs (wood creek)

@ benmackie. Wood Creek.......Okay. I didn't know which subdivision that was but I asked my wife and you are right up the street. I live in Bridgewater.

Cutting it too short isn't what messed it up. Letting it grow too long and cutting it short aka taking off too much of the blade is what messed it up. Also, it doesn't look like you bagged so the thatch appears to be a little thick like I mentioned above.

Is your grass ruined? No. It's bermuda. It will come back. We are towards the end of the growing season but I do think you may have enough time to do some work and possibly get it to green up before fall. Here's what I would do:

1. Look into dethatching your yard. I don't know a lot about it and even if it's necessary with Bermuda but that is something that I would look into.
2. Fertilize it. We got a lot of rain in the past week. If your grass has hardly grown, it probably needs some fertilizer. Get a fertilizer where the first number is big and the last 2 are small or 0. There is a John Deere store off of 64 a few miles past Beaver Creek that sells Lesco Fertilizer. They sell a 46-0-0 fertilizer which must be watered in after putting down. I have had very good (not great) success this year using that and Milorganite monthly.
3. It will be time to put down a pre-emergent in the next month or so. Keep that in the back of your mind too.

Like I said, I pretty much live down the street. I am a lawn enthusiast. If you have any questions, or even want me to come over, e-mail me through my profile. I have 46-0-0 and a spreader. If you want, I am willing to come over and put some down. Best of luck!! Also, I am about to make a thread with some fertilization questions. Stick your head in there. I think you will find it useful.

@sherm1082

Thanks man!

Lowes wouldn't sell me fertilizer when I went last week. They said it's not the right time of year...weird. I will be going to that local shop instead.

I just walked around the yard and some places look awesome. Thick, short green... while other spots look real woody.

I need to buy you a beer at bass lake. Cheers!

No problem benmackie. I'm learning there's a lot that goes into maintaining a yard properly. Let me know how I can help. Also, check out my other thread. I was told to stay away from 46-0-0 so you may want to get something else. Best of luck.

I live in Raleigh area too and it has been a interesting learning curve trying to get my bermuda to grow. Our bermuda was sodded in the end of March but it was over seeded with rye. Due to the extra rain and cooler summer, the rye competed with the bermuda. It basically created dead spot as it slowly die off. The Bermuda is finally slowly filling in.

Anyway, I suggest getting a soil test.
http://www.ncagr.gov/agronomi/sthome.htm

Found out the PH was really low - 4.9
my Phosphorus was 11 and Potassium was 50.

So after a few application of lime and 10-10-10 at 5lbs per 1000 sq ft per the report recommendation.

It greened up my bermuda.

I'm finally seeing some improvement in my yard. I believe the primary culprit was letting it get too high and cutting it too short. According to the landscaper that laid it, and the farm that sold it, it typically takes 4 weeks or so for tifgrand to come back from such treatment. I think another culprit was lack of fertilizer. According to a home test kit, my ph was on the money, but nitrogen barely even registered. I put nitrogen down at 1 lb. per 1000 sq. ft. a couple weeks ago and that seems to have given it a boost. It's still not green like it was in June, but it's getting better. Thanks for everyone's advice.

Thanks for the info on sticking pictures together. I use Irfanview for 99% of my image retouching. It is very basic but does what I need most of the time. For putting two pictures together like that I would just go to PowerPoint. There's too many tools to learn in Photoshop.

A home test kit will not give you nearly the amount of information or accuracy as a Logan Labs test costing $20. Nitrogen will always show low on every test from everyone. Some of the soil nitrogen is bound up in biological materials like protein in dead microbes. Get a real test.

To have a great looking bermuda lawn, it needs a high N fert every month. Reread that part in the Bermuda Bible.