New Home and Half of My Bermuda Grass is Not Growing Back. Help! (Phoenix: neighborhoods, to live in)

[Sno0909]

Originally Posted by HatchChile

You chose to live in a desert. No one forced you. Does Bermuda grass natively grow in Arizona? So why force it when you have other, native to Arizona, subjectively beautiful options for landscaping?


But, as John Wayne famously said: if you are stupid, you better be tough. Cause you'll be working hard and paying out the wazoo to maintain that useless, dead, carefully engineered plant that is void of life and provides virtually zero habitat for pollinators.

Palm trees aren't native here either. Better chop them all down. Tempe Town Lake is man-made, we better drain it. Want me to continue?

[hikernut]

Cutting back on watering just as it's getting hot does not seem right to me, but I'll confess we do not have a Bermuda lawn. Our immediate neighbors' lawns are looking really nice right now, but there are others (who normally have nice yards) with large dead areas. I wonder if the very hot weather we had in June was a problem for some?

[HatchChile]

Originally Posted by Prickly Pear

There are no native grass species that grow in the Sonoran desert. In fact no grass grows in the desert... that's kind of the point. Otherwise we'd be the Great Plains 2.0

I didn't mean grass. I suggested xeriscaping, and meant to say with native plants.

[HatchChile]

Originally Posted by Sno0909

Palm trees aren't native here either. Better chop them all down. Tempe Town Lake is man-made, we better drain it. Want me to continue?

Yes, to getting rid of palm trees. You ain't in Florida, are you? Go with what's native to Arizona. You'll cut your maintenance so much, plus it's good for the environment. Here is the resource... these native gardens look gorgeous. Why not? https://aznps.com/grow-native/

[john3232]

Originally Posted by damatster03

I purchased my home in December of 2020 and it had a lush green winter lawn in the front and back yards. I reduced watering it in April until early May when the winter lawn had died and aerated, fertilized, and threw down some more Bermuda seed. By early June the winter grass in half of the yard appeared to come back to life while the rest of the yard had Bermuda come up. A few months later, the winter lawn is completely dead with no Bermuda growing through. Does anybody have any ideas why? I looked at pics of the house from last year and google and it had a nice summer lawn

Don't know why the Bermuda died in one area but not the other. Here's my recommendation: take a shovel and turn over the area where the grass isn't growing. Break up the clay soil and mix it with some mulch:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Kellogg-...-621/100427388

Next put down seeds and then cover the seeds lightly with with dirt. Or you can use a top soil:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Kellogg-...-653/100427389

However, be careful. If you've already put down a fertilizer this year additional top soil might "burn" your lawn.

This summer I got the grass in the backyard of a rental looking pretty good considering it was hard clay when I started.

However, there were still patches I needed to fill in so I used Scott's Turf builder. I asked about using top soil again and one person told me not to. Said too much fertilizer would burn the lawn.

Another person told me not to worry and that I should put down a top soil... which I did.

Two days later lawn had started to turn a sickly brownish yellow.

So, it was back to square one: flipped over the dirt, broke up the clay, planted new seeds and lightly covered them with dirt. Didn't mix in any additional Kellogg Gromulch and of course no top soil.

The Bermuda grass is now coming back. Once it gets going it seems to grow pretty fast.

[caryberry]

Have you had your soil tested? You may be giving your grass the wrong nourishment.

[Ex New Yorker]

Originally Posted by Sno0909

Palm trees aren't native here either. Better chop them all down. Tempe Town Lake is man-made, we better drain it. Want me to continue?

Apparently some are. Maybe not in Phoenix?

Are palm trees native to Arizona?
Arizona’s native palm trees can only be found at the palm canyon located on the Kofa National Wildlife Refuge . The California fan palm/desert palm/petticoat palm also scientifically known as Washingtonia filifera is the only palm tree native to Arizona.
Reference:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/...20to%20Arizona.

[Prickly Pear]

If we were smarter back in the day, we might even have a free-flowing Salt River instead of Tempe Town Lake. But hindsight is 20/20, right?


That's what following generations will say when they become refugees and forced to leave here. Unless of course, we do prevention rather than reaction. Which means reducing water now, so there's more of it later.

[john3232]

Originally Posted by caryberry

Have you had your soil tested? You may be giving your grass the wrong nourishment.

I used this:
https://www.amazon.com/MySoil-Soil-P.../dp/B084TSNR79

[Sno0909]

Originally Posted by Ex New Yorker

Apparently some are. Maybe not in Phoenix?

I didn't know that, but I was more referencing the greater Phoenix Metro.