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lawn grass in zone 7b (Franklin, TN) for relatively low maintenance (mowing once a week in summer, occasional watering when there's a dry spell)?
Currently, my lawn is mostly Bermuda grass, which is fine, except it grows super fast as long as there's regular rain, and keeping it out of the flower beds has been an ongoing challenge.
Should I keep it and put extra work into the beds, or overseed with something else?
The house faces South. The front yard gets full sun all day, all year. Back yard gets it late spring - early fall. The rest of the time, about half the backyard is shaded all day.
I'll hang up and listen.
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03-11-2025, 09:22 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-11-2025, 09:23 AM by McDonoughDawg.)
Edging around flower beds, create some type of space, I have been using bags of river pebbles in some places for a border...easy to mow around and easy to kill the grass, etc, I use roundup...my Emerald Zoysia is aggressive too...starting over sounds like a lot of work if you have a nice lawn now.
I need to get some weed and feed fertilizer...glad you posted this.
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All grass is going to grow fast in warm weather with a lot of rain. Zoysia, once established, is pretty hard to beat. It is thick enough that it crowds out most weeds, doesn't spread very fast but isn't very drought tolerant. I am on the absolute southern edge of Zoysia's range, it will grow here but it needs a lot of water due to the heat. I have mostly Bermuda (with some centipede) in the front and my back is all St. Augustine since my backyard is more shaded. I love the drought tolerance of Bermuda, it can look like a broom and one afternoon shower will restore it to being fully green. Centipede also isn't hard to keep as long as you don't use the wrong fertilizer.
After Helene my yard may never look good again.
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(03-11-2025, 09:22 AM)Replying to McDonoughDawg Edging around flower beds, create some type of space, I have been using bags of river pebbles in some places for a border...easy to mow around and easy to kill the grass, etc, I use roundup...my Emerald Zoysia is aggressive too...starting over sounds like a lot of work if you have a nice lawn now.
I need to get some weed and feed fertilizer...glad you posted this.
Yeah, I have looked into changing it over entirely. It's expensive to pay a service to do it, it's also expensive to do it yourself because you won't be as good at it.
I think my time will be better spent working on the edges of the beds. I'm going to try hammering in some 6" metal edge barriers and dig out the remnants of Bermuda in the beds from last year.
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(03-11-2025, 09:30 AM)Replying to JC-DAWG83 All grass is going to grow fast in warm weather with a lot of rain. Zoysia, once established, is pretty hard to beat. It is thick enough that it crowds out most weeds, doesn't spread very fast but isn't very drought tolerant. I am on the absolute southern edge of Zoysia's range, it will grow here but it needs a lot of water due to the heat. I have mostly Bermuda (with some centipede) in the front and my back is all St. Augustine since my backyard is more shaded. I love the drought tolerance of Bermuda, it can look like a broom and one afternoon shower will restore it to being fully green. Centipede also isn't hard to keep as long as you don't use the wrong fertilizer.
After Helene my yard may never look good again.
Zoysia is nice, but it doesn't stay green for very long. It can also develop brown spots that are hard to correct. But it feels great to walk on barefooted.
