# Midsoutherners Bermuda Lawn Journal



## Midsoutherner (Aug 25, 2020)

I just discovered this forum in the last few weeks and I'm learning quite a bit about properly taking care of my lawn. There is A LOT that I don't know so I'm trying to take it all one step at a time. I don't have a ton of extra time so this all may end up not looking all that improved in the long run but I'd like to look back as time goes to see any progress I make and maybe laugh at the mistakes I made along the way.

My first set of pictures are just of the front of the house. I had just cut the grass and attempted to edge along the driveway and street. I don't have any gutters or curbs and previous owners were appehappy to let the bermuda attempt to take over the street. 






I think I did just an OK job for my first try. I gave up on the street and the one corner of the driveway for now because the string kept breaking (I really would love a better string trimmer) and I was afraid I'd run out of daylight and string before I finished so I'll be back at it before too long to finish that.



Above is what I always end up with after cutting the grass. Tons of leftover clumps. I have a Troy Bilt mulching push mower with a Honda engine on it that was given to me by my father in law. I'm very grateful he gave it to me but it's time to retire it. I'm sure that it's not as powerful as it once was and it's always had a strong vibration through the push handle to really has made my arms tired since I started cutting this much larger lawn.



I sent this to my local extension office to see if they would help identify what grass I have and the answer I got was bermuda and 50% or more weeds and they suggested killing off everything I have and starting over with TF. Not exactly the advise I was hoping for to say the least. That drastic of a measure isn't possible so my goal for now is to just get through until winter and create a plan for next year in the spring. I hope to be able to get rid of some of the weeds with a pre emergent to start and maybe getting someone at work to split the cost of some of the herbicides I'll need to control everything else. Also have to find out what scalping actually means and see if the SR mower I'd like to get can handle doing that.

If you read all. Of this, Thank you! I hope to be able to show some nice improvements as I learn and work on my lawn.


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## Midsoutherner (Aug 25, 2020)

Not much to update here other than this stupid ordeal I got myself into with my new Toro super recycler.

I originally bought a closeout deal on a 20383 ($530). It cut better than my Troy Bilt that it replaced but after turning it on its side after my first cut I discovered that it didn't have the accelerator plate in the middle of the blade like all of the other SRs have. Talked to Toro and they said that the spin stop system was designed to create the same effect as the accelerator. I don't buy that at all. The dealer I bought it from reluctantly agreed to let me return it less $50 and said I could order the one I wanted from the toro website and it would be just like buying from them.

So I ordered a 21386. It showed up yesterday delivered by UPS and the box looked like it had been thrown around for the entire trip. On closer inspection I found several rear brackets are bent, and there is a chip on the lower edge of the deck. I can't tell if the deck is bent on the back left side or not. Also, the box had clearly been opened and someone took the oil bottle out and did a bad job closing the box back up. It also looks like the box was upside down for a while too. There are two separate labels, one to identify it weighs more than 70lbs and one that looks like it was put there to identify the guy who was delivering it to me that are on the bottom of the box. So now I'm following the UPS damage claim process to see what they will do for me.






I hate this turned into such a big issue. Now I have to wait to even use this one. I'm not sure if anything with the engine has been damaged. I'm stuck waiting for a few parts to fix my old Troy bilt. Hopefully everything shows up tomorrow so I can at least get the grass cut this week.


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## dubyadubya87 (Mar 10, 2020)

Midsoutherner said:


> I sent this to my local extension office to see if they would help identify what grass I have and the answer I got was bermuda and 50% or more weeds and they suggested killing off everything I have and starting over with TF. Not exactly the advise I was hoping for to say the least. That drastic of a measure isn't possible so my goal for now is to just get through until winter and create a plan for next year in the spring. I hope to be able to get rid of some of the weeds with a pre emergent to start and maybe getting someone at work to split the cost of some of the herbicides I'll need to control everything else. Also have to find out what scalping actually means and see if the SR mower I'd like to get can handle doing that.
> 
> If you read all. Of this, Thank you! I hope to be able to show some nice improvements as I learn and work on my lawn.


Welcome! If it were me, I would work a season with what I had, just to see for sure, before going through the hassle and expense of starting new. Start a pre-em program with other best practices, read the Bermuda Bible and then next fall decide.
Good luck with the mower.


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## Midsoutherner (Aug 25, 2020)

dubyadubya87 said:


> Welcome! If it were me, I would work a season with what I had, just to see for sure, before going through the hassle and expense of starting new. Start a pre-em program with other best practices, read the Bermuda Bible and then next fall decide.
> Good luck with the mower.


Thank you for the welcome and reply! I have read the Bermuda bible and I have been reading about the Bermuda triangle also. I do plan on getting a sprayer and an Pre-em put down but may have to wait for spring to do that. Its bugging me a lot that I have so many weeds but we just moved and have been spending a lot of money on other things so since the lawn is green compared to what we had at the last house my wife is resistant to investing more after this fiasco with the mower. Do you have any recommendations on a 1 gallon sprayer that can use T-jet nozzles? I need to read through the J-jet nozzle topic more to see if there are any lower cost recommendations. I feel like a 4 gallon powered backpack sprayer would be best for the size lawn I have but I will go with smaller if it gets me in the door!

I found out that normally Toro directs you to bring your mower to a dealer and they will fix whatever is damaged under warranty but I wasn't told that when I called them before UPS came to pick the mower up to inspect the damage. So if that person I talked with at Toro had gotten me the correct information I may have a working mower right now or at least the parts would be on order. Now I have to wait two billing cycles to get my money back from Toro. I might just go try and find a deal on a Honda HRX. It cuts lower than the SR, and I keep reading things about the Briggs engines sputtering significantly at random.


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## dubyadubya87 (Mar 10, 2020)

Midsoutherner said:


> dubyadubya87 said:
> 
> 
> > Welcome! If it were me, I would work a season with what I had, just to see for sure, before going through the hassle and expense of starting new. Start a pre-em program with other best practices, read the Bermuda Bible and then next fall decide.
> ...


For your size yard, I think a 4-gallon is the way to go. I've got the Solo and it performs well.


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## Midsoutherner (Aug 25, 2020)

Been a while since I last updated this so here we go. I ended up buying a SR from Home Depot with a killer coupon they sent me after we moved in so that has been a really nice change. No sputtering problems with the Briggs motor at all. I also was able to get a Ryobi 4 gallon sprayer, blue 110 degree t jet nozzles (I cant remember the part numbers, but one was the AI and the other was a fan) and some Prodiamine, and Celsius to get me going this spring.

I was about a week, maybe 2, late getting my Pre-E down so I now have a TON of weeds growing in the back. I also messed up and put down 1/10th of the amount of Pre-E that I meant do because I made a rookie mistake and didn't convert oz to grams  when I was weighing everything out. The pictures here are of what I looked like on March 14, a few days after I put down my first app of Pre-E. I didn't have all my equipment in Feb so I was late and put too little down the first go around. I adjusted my second app so that I am now actually at half of my yearly max, so I hope that once the Celsius kills off what is there now, most of the weeds will be prevented going forward. My wife seems skeptical that all this money I've invested in the lawn so far is worth it, so I really hope that by the end of the year this year I will have some noticeably good results.





I thought I had a bunch of crab grass in the back yard but I think that most of it is actually Poa annua, and some type of fescue (the real dark clumps in the pictures above). Had I realized that I probably would have bought Certainty first since Celsius isn't labled for Poa control. I put down a high dose of 3.2 grams/ 1000 broadcast of Celsius in hopes that it would only be needed one time as a broadcast like this and I would still have a little room to spot spray through the year. I used a surfactant, and probably added too much because I didnt have a dedicated tsp spoon for this yet so I hope that having a little too much isnt going to hurt the effectiveness. I put the celsius down about 2 weeks ago, and I am seeing some weeds die off but not much on the poa, or the other grass like weeds in the yard, which of course are the majority of them right now. Ill have to get a picture of the front yard soon. There are different weeds up there.


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## Midsoutherner (Aug 25, 2020)

These are a couple of the weeds I'm not sure of what they are. I've mowed the lawn a few times since my scalp on the lowest setting on the SR (1 1/4 inch) and I'm keeping it at around 2 inches right now in hopes that my Bermuda will fully wake up and start to take over where the weeds are, but some of those are very tightly clumped together so I may have to dig them up as a temporary solution before I spend another $100 on some certainty. I'm looking now to get some liquid fert to put down to help get the Bermuda growing aggressively, which sounds like kind of a blessing and curse from what others have been saying. This is my first Bermuda lawn so I hope I can keep up with it, because a complete reno and sod of something else is not an option. I'm not even sure what kind of Bermuda I have actually. The neighborhood has been around for 20 years so I don't know what was put down at the beginning. Guess Ill just see what happens.

I also tried my best to clean up the edge of my yard at the front street. I don't have a curb to cut it nice and straight against, and right now I don't have an edger so I just used a shovel and I couldn't believe how far into the street the Bermuda was able to grow. Now that its cut back I'm hoping to be able to keep it trimmed back with my string trimmer (This needs an upgrade too but it was given to me for free so I cant really complain too much).


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## ionicatoms (Mar 8, 2020)

Glad to hear you finally got the SR issues squared away. I had a similar issue with a toilet. It seems that certain products just aren't packaged for residential delivery.


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## Midsoutherner (Aug 25, 2020)

Alright so the bermuda is waking up really well now and I am hoping to push growth as the daytime Temps are staying in the 80s now. I put down some N-sure from yardmastery at 6oz/k a week ago. Hopefully that wasn't too early. Seems like it hasn't hurt anything, so I'm banking on it helping the grass start to grow faster.





Took down the playset on Monday. I couldn't let the kids play on it since it was rotting out too badly. Wish I had noticed that when we had bought the house but that's alright. I'm anxious to see the bermuda take over the bare spots that were under the fort.

For now I'm waiting for the heat to eventually kill off the poa and save the money I would spend on certainty and use it for a new string trimmer. I'm leaning heavily towards the EGO multi head line so I can eventually add a PRS, but the buy in is very steep so I'm looking for cheaper alternatives for a trimmer that can run a PRS and also an edger. Ace is selling the EGO multihead trimmer and edger combo kit for $400 right now which is a killer deal since just the trimmer multi head kit is $350. I'm not sure if I can find a high voltage trimmer and edger separately for $200 each that will be as durable as the EGO stuff.

Over all I'm sure I'm overthinking all of this so who knows what I'll end up with in the end.



Final picture if of the front yard. This side of my house seems like it's going to be a bigger challenge to get looking nice. There seems to be a large number of various grasses,not weeds, that were not touched by the celsius so I don't know the best way to get rid of them. I could try certainty and see how it goes. I really don't want to have to paint a millions of grasses with glyphosate.


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## Midsoutherner (Aug 25, 2020)

ionicatoms said:


> Glad to hear you finally got the SR issues squared away. I had a similar issue with a toilet. It seems that certain products just aren't packaged for residential delivery.


Good tip about the toilet. We need one of those too. I'll make sure to get one sent to the store or get one thats in stock! 😂


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