# Bermuda losing green color and stopped growing



## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

Earlier this year I planted La Prima XD bermuda seed in our small San Diego front lawn. I planted at the end of July and by the end of August things looked good (see below). However, about mid-September the lawn lost its green color and growth more or less stopped.

Any ideas on what might be causing this. A couple details if it helps:
- Day temps are still pretty high recently; about 80+ but get down to 60 or so at night
- I'm not sure if it's related but a bunch of lizards have been hanging out looking like they're hunting something?
- There was a huge buildup of clippings at one point that I raked out but this doesn't seem to have helped much.

End of July:



Now:


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## adgattoni (Oct 3, 2017)

Looks thirsty. How much are you watering?


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## Gibby (Apr 3, 2018)

@brods I had what almost looked like the same issue, watered and it bounced back within 3 hours.


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## ltsibley (Jul 30, 2019)

Possibly army worms. I had the same issue last year around September and ended up having a huge infestation of army worms. They'll eat away all the green foliage.


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## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

@Gibby @adgattoni I've tried different watering strategies but 1-1.5 inches per week over 2-3 days of watering. It definitely doesn't recover immediately after watering. One thing maybe worth mentioning is that I have started getting pretty major runoff issues where water tends to collect at the edges of the yard. I'm not sure if this is due to the poor quality clay soil?

@ltsibley how do you test for worms and if they're there get rid of them.

Thanks all!


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## Gibby (Apr 3, 2018)

@brods my bad parts have hard packed clay I found at 2"


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## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

@Gibby The clay was 2 inches deep or that's how much you watered? Thanks again.


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## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

Also, I have a bunch of tiny little fly looking things that pop up out of the grass when I'm walking around. Could these be part of the problem?


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## Gibby (Apr 3, 2018)

@brods it was started 2" deep. Only watered for 20 minutes or about 0.25"


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## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

@Gibby Was there a solution to the clay thing or did you just change watering approaches? Other?


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## Gibby (Apr 3, 2018)

@brods I just found it 10 hours ago... for now I am watering more often but less time until I come up with a long term solution.


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## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

I tried watering more to see if things would pick back up but no luck. I was going to try putting down this product - Sevin insect killer lawn granules with bifenthrin and zeter-cypermethrin in case it's worms. Any thoughts?: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Sevin-10-lbs-Garden-Insect-Granules-Killer-100530128/304779519

One last thing. It seems like the grass is dying and thinning out in addition to going yellow/brown. You can see in the picture below the amount of grass I raked up in about a 3x3 foot area. I don't think it is clippings since I've barely mowed anything in the past month and raked up a similar pile, but from the whole lawn, not too long ago. Is this indicative of any other problem?

I feel like I'm losing the lawn here so any additional help would be great. Thanks!


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## cglarsen (Dec 28, 2018)

@brods I had some of the same loss of color, thinning on some new sod I laid earlier this year and could not figure it out since it wasn't a lack of water or nutrients and soil type isn't a big factor to bermuda. Actually your soil profile looks excellent. Anyway, I treated for insects and fungus and ended up having both during August. Turf is looking good now. That's what I'd do on yours. Dylox and Azoxystrobin.


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## Batsonbe (May 9, 2019)

cglarsen said:


> @brods I had some of the same loss of color, thinning on some new sod I laid earlier this year and could not figure it out since it wasn't a lack of water or nutrients and soil type isn't a big factor to bermuda. Actually your soil profile looks excellent. Anyway, I treated for insects and fungus and ended up having both during August. Turf is looking good now. That's what I'd do on yours. Dylox and Azoxystrobin.


My newly seeded Bermuda turned kinda grey and wasn't a deep dark green anymore. Upon further inspection my reel was dull and ripping the grass as well as I had a fungus. 
Backlapped the reel, cut at 1/2" approx and spread 
Azoxystrobin. My lawn looks the best it ever has now. Bounced back within a week or so.


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## CarolinaCuttin (Sep 6, 2019)

You can test for army worms with a few ounces of dish soap in 5 gallons of water. Pour it on the grass in a small area and they will come out of the ground in a minute or two. If you have them and can use bifenthrin in CA that's what I'd do.

Seeded varieties are more resistant to disease than their hybrid counterparts, and having a disease affect the entire lawn uniformly would be extremely odd. I think it's either your irrigation, burning from a product application, or army worms.

It honestly just looks dry to me, if you give it a good soak (0.75-1.00 inches of water) in the early morning for two days that ought to get it to perk back up.

Edit: Looks like highs near 75, few clouds, wind 10 mph and 50% humidity is the standard right now in San Diego. That's going to dry things out really quickly.


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## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

@CarolinaCuttin Thanks for the advice. You brink up an interesting point with the irrigation. I went back and checked and different parts of the lawn are definitely getting watered at different rates so I'll go back and try go fix that.

Another interesting thing is one of the sprinklers wasn't working and when I pulled it I found the little critters below all over it. Are these little guys part of the problem?


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## Redtwin (Feb 9, 2019)

That's a slug. He's probably not part of the problem.


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## ltsibley (Jul 30, 2019)

Sorry for my delay in replying. CarolinaCuttin is correct, you can use the dish soap method to check for army worms. You mentioned white flies when you walk around and that very well could be armyworm moths. They lay the eggs in your turf which turn into army worms, at least I believe that's the cycle. You could use ready to spray Triazicide Insect Killer that you can get from Home Depot to treat.

Could also be a mixture of army worms and watering. I'd refer back to CarolinaCuttin again on the heavy watering. Might need to run shorter run times if you have runoff or pooling and run the cycle through 2-3 times. That's actually how I water. Run each zone around 15-20 mins through the whole cycle, then run 1-2 more times.


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## brods (Jul 22, 2019)

Good news....in the past couple weeks the grass has bounced back, although not to where I wish it was. The extra water seemed to help some but it didn't really green back up as much as I would have liked. I ended up hitting it with Bifenthin and Scott's disease ex. As a scientist I'm not super proud of the approach and still not knowing exactly what the culprit was but it seemed to work. Those little flies/gnats/baby moths (not sure what they are) went away for a few days after the bifenthin but seem to have come back. Is this expected and should it be a reason for concern?

You can still see some brown from the previous leaf death. Probably cutting lower would get rid of it but this late in the season it seems like maybe not worth it. We do have at least a week left of this nice weather though (high 70s to low 80s during the day and high 50s to low 60s at night). What do you all think? I'm also wondering if I should hit it with more N to maximize growth in what season is left.


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