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Princess 77 Bermuda Lawn Renovation.

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77K views 300 replies 34 participants last post by  ENC_Lawn  
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#1 ·
I started my lawn renovation of my old lawn which was a mixture of common Bermuda and some Zenith Zoysia along with some spots of Centipede April 3rd of this year.

The only thing I did before this year was apply some were around 400 to 600 pounds of Lime last year and into early 2019 to raise the PH of my soil.

So on April 3rd the first glyphosate round was applied.

From there the lawn received right much water through out the month and I ended up applying 3 rounds of glyphosate to the yard over the next 3 weeks...and one last round 2 days before I seeded.

My front and back yard is around 14,000 square feet and the start date to seed was going to be middle of May to 1st week of June.

However...my front yard had died off so well vs my backyard and local soil temps were holding around 65 to 70 degrees I decided to seed my front yard on May 3rd.

May 3rd seed went down but due to my schedule I was headed out of town so I couldn't start properly watering until about 24 hours later.
 
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#7 ·
3 days into seeding.

I have sprinklers and hoses everywhere.

I am watering 7 minutes per sprinkler every 2 hours...trying to make sure I do not over water and have water puddles or standing water.

The standing water you see in this pic seems to be from the low spots in my lawn.

I tried different watering times and it seemed those areas puddled no matter what.

 
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#9 ·
So yesterday May 15th I come home and notice a lot of my seeds that had germination had turned Purple.

I didn't get the best picture and will try to take some better ones...but at this point I'm a little concerned.

After talking to more knowledgeable people with way more experience than me hopefully it's the low air temps we had the past 3 days along with frequent watering.

I also read where this could be a phosphorus deficiency in the little seedlings were there roots can't get down in the soil deep enough to get nutrients.

I'm hoping time and sunlight will help. It's suppose to be in 90's the next 10 days.

However I also read starter fertilizer helps the purple seeds get back there green color.

I'm only 12 days in and I'm trying to hold off until at least day 15 or so to drop the starter fertilizer.

Has anyone else experienced there new germinated seeds turning purple after some back to back days of cooler temperatures?
 
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#12 ·
@Alex_18 good luck with your Reno...and thanks for the tip! Im going to make sure when I seed my backyard I put down a balanced starter Fertilizer and that should hopefully help next time!

I will make sure I check our your lawn renovation as well!

How often are you fertilizing? My plan is to drop .5 pounds of nitrogen every 15 days for about 1.5 months of starter fertilize then move to straight nitrogen at .5 pounds every 15 days.

I have read a paper from the University Of Missouri Turfgrass Research Center on Aggressive Bermuda grow in for athletic fields and they are spoon feeding .5 pounds of nitrogen every 7 to 10 days. I want to try this once the Bermuda gets strong enough to handle it...but again this is my first renovation and I am nervous about being that aggressive.
 
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#13 ·
@ENC_Lawn Im under the impression from everything that ive read is that you want to push phosphorus right now, and keep the nitrogen as low as possible to keep weeds at bay also. Phosphorus will encourage root growth which is critical. So im putting my seed down tomorrow morning with Scotts starter fert which is 24-25-4 @ 1.5 lb phosphorus/1000sqft. I know its a lot of nitrogen which goes against what i just said but its the best source of phosphorus I have available to me. So im spraying my yard with glyphosate in a few minutes in an attempt to keep any weeds at bay.

As far as fertilizing after establishment, i was planning on holding off until after the first mow which will be at roughly 90% germination. So once my yard is 90% green, i will mow then start the same nitrogen spoon feeding you mentioned above @ .5 lb/1000sqft and also start taking care of any weeds that do come up. I dont want to over do the nitrogen until i know my lawn is well established. But next spring/summer, i will push it
 
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#14 ·
@Alex_18

Gotcha...so it sounds like using starter fertilizer until the 3rd mow...might work just fine because it will allow some nitrogen as well as phosphorus....then just switch to nitrogen?

Im with you...about not pushing nitrogen too much early on.

Im basically trying to follow @J_nick renovation as closely as I can.
 
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#19 ·
Day 15

This morning I put down some 18-24-6 Sta Green starter fertilizer at .5 pounds of nitrogen per 1k square feet.

I am hoping the phosphorus in the starter fertilizer helps germination and the purple color a lot of my seedlings have.

Also I am trying to be patient...but I am a little concerned I do not have more germination that I currently have.

I seeded over 2.5 pounds per 1,000 square feet when I seeded and have watered every 2 hours for 7 to 8 minutes.

I have been watering from day 1 with the above ground Orbit Sprinklers you get from Lowe's...and the ground has stayed very wet.

I have been so aware of not watering enough...that now I am starting to doubt my strategy and fear I have been over watering?

I have tried to limit "puddling" in the yard but when I have walked through the lawn daily...the lawn has been very spongy and you could see shoe prints.

The lack of germination at day 14 makes me wonder if I have over watered?

However we had about 3 days last week of low temperatures that most likely slowed germination.

That being said the next 10 days are going to be in 90's almost everyday so Hopefully 1 week from now I will have way more germination.

I have been following @J_nick renovation thread and my results at day 14 compared to his...makes me wonder if its the month of May temperatures compared to June or something else.

That being said I noticed this on the NTEP research. Princess 77 Bermuda had a very slow establishment compared to Riveria and others if you look at the percentage of establishment 30 and 60 days after seeding "if I remember correctly".

But Princess 77 Bermuda did eventually catch up to the others around August in Establishment.

Also when I spoke to Pennington Seed last year. One of there lawn experts who was very familiar with Princess 77 Bermuda told me that Princess 77 had a tendency to germinate and "sit" for a while before it decided to spread.

So hopefully the next week or so I will get some good growth.

Also since its the weekend and I can watch the lawn all day. I have cut back my watering to every 12 hours for 30 minutes

Just to allow the soil to dry up a little bit. My goal is to keep it wet but not so much that I can't walk on it..

I have clay soil that doesn't drain the best so and I'm going to try this for 1 to 2 days.

The seed company actually recommended me watering 20 to 30 minutes 2 to 3 times a day vs how I have been doing it.

I will post some pictures below.
 
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#21 ·
I cut back on my watering today but you can still see how moist the soil looks.

Some areas of my lawn will puddle water where other areas do not. Some of the puddling is low spots in the lawn...while the other areas are overlapping of sprinklers spray.

In this pic I had just started watering the starter fertilizer into the soil.



 
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#26 ·
I just started my Bermuda reno a couple weeks ago and have the same purple coloring on some of my seedlings. I put down Scott's starter with weed preventer and was thinking it was the mesotrione causing the discoloration. I did do a soil test before I started and my P levels were super low so that would seem to confirm what Alex_18 is saying.
 
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