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My neighbor has Bermuda Grass and I have Fescue/mix. Over the course of 11 years his grass has taken over a corner of my yard, including the rose/planting bed.
I want to know how to get rid of it in the rose area and KEEP IT OUT! I've tried spraying the grass, but it's all tangled in the mulch and roots of the roses. Should I dig up everything? Including the roses, and start from scratch? The darn stuff is so low my mower won't reach it and it seeds so quickly.
You really aren't going to be able to prevent it in that situation as bermuda spreads by underground runners called rhizomes that will grow right through your landscaping beds.
However there is a new chemical control that is readily available and somewhat affordable and that's Bayer Advanced Bermudagrass control. It comes in a hose-end spray bottle at lowes/depot. It's about $20 for the bottle that covers 5,000sf.
It will likely take multiple applications throughout the growing season so this will be an ongoing routine for you to maintain. Do not wait. The longer the bermuda is there growing, the more energy it is producing and storing in its roots. Get to it as soon as you see it.
Another thing by the way... plant a tree there at the property line that produces heavy shade. Bermuda does not tolerate shade very well and will thin way out. A tree with a lot of surface roots will be an added bonus in this case. REd maple and Beech come to mind.
Here's a unique thought---have you talked to your neighbor about this problem? I know some neighbors do not communicate but perhaps this neighbor is a good guy but just isn't aware of the stress his bermuda is causing you. Maybe you could work on the problem together- at least he could go halvies on the chemical control shagbark hickroy so kindly told us all about. Why do folks still plant bermuda. We all end up fighting it endlessly and it causes strife between neighbors. Is fescue that much more expensive? As I remember, bermuda (arizona) is the only bermuda which can be grown from seed. Is that why it is still used? I'm too lazy to look it up but I know somebody can tell me the price difference between hybrid bermuda sod, arizona bermuda seed and fescue sod. Any takers?????
I'll give it a shot.
I am in the atlanta area where bermuda is extremely popular but is dormant for all but 5 months- maybe 6 months- for some varieties- of the year. It quickly goes dormant in the cold. That's the primary problem I have with it.
Unfortunately it's impossible to kill and the sod is dirt cheap because of this fact.
The way it's harvested by sod farms is they literally cut the sod and then just wait for it to grow back from the roots! They never have to replant it.
The new home builders who are cheap as all get out, love bermuda because it's cheap and they can just plop it down on un-level, compacted clay soil and leave it, never ever water it and still have it survive. They don't have to prepare the planting site or worry about any of the debris they leave in the ground. The bermuda grows right over the 2x4's and broken bricks contractors leave behind in the soil.
Because under fairly intensive management it exhibits very high turf quality for a few months each summer, it get's comparatively high rankings over tall fescue which struggles to survive the summer heat and drought. In essence you have county extension offices and the state universities saying to plant bermuda because of this high quality despite the grass being impossible to kill.
How impossible is it to kill, you ask? Well 3 years ago I decided I was going to kill my 2 year old bermuda sod and plant something else. I spent the entire summer using glyphosate non-selective herbicide like roundup, repeatedly spraying over and over and it kept coming back. It came back the next year and the next year and the next year. I use the bayer stuff now but it still comes back.
I'll give you another example. There is a part of our subdivision entrance that has a little bit of erosion problem and we filled it in with soil but it needed some grass on top to keep it from washing away. I had planted a tree in a neighbor's yard and collected all the bermuda sod that I dug up with a shovel in a milion little bits. I took this over to the bare soil during late spring when it started to get really hot and we didn't have very much rain. Any other grass would have died without water. But I just plopped down these little torn up bits of sod and they survived and filled in the bare soil already.
The alternatives in this area are tough to get going by comparison even though they look better for 9 months of the year, tall fescue needs to be watered or it will die. That's tough to do in a watering ban.
Zoysiagrass is another alternative but it too spreads to unwanted areas and is disease prone.
Centipede is another warm season creeper but it's only marginally cold hardy.
Because of our clay soil and drought, it is very difficult to start a lawn by seed. Takes a lot of prep work. Bermuda sod is much easier and most people don't care that you can never kill it. To them that's a benefit. But they don't realize that it is very high maintenance requiring frequent mowing during the hottest, most unpleasant times of the year, lots and lots of fertilizer, and lots of edging and roundup to control it in landscaping.
In a perfect world, people should be planting trees and creating shade in their yard. Bermuda is not very shade tolerant but the fescues are.
So that is the problem as I see it.
And also, the bulk of what is used here is tifway 419 hybrid sod. Not the common types that are available in seed form. The builders use the sod. The hydrid cultivars do usually rank higher for performance and cold tolerance.
What about putting down a liner - or will that root-rot the roses?
I forgot to mention bermuda also spreads aggressively above ground.
Of course you can generally pull up these runners if you get to them early. Still a big pain in the butt.
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