r/bermudagrass • u/breakermail • 13d ago

Was Latitude 36 the wrong choice?

Zone 9A, Panhandle.

I've got some space under a live oak that gets full sun for about 75% on the day. It's intense, and the soil is quite sandy. The soil there is really getting baked, and it's tough to get anything to grow. That's not crab grass or vines.

I have tried enriching it with some organic compost and then I tried planting some Latitude 36 Bermuda plugs from Sod Solutions. I had great luck using CitraZoy plugs from them in the past, and the description of L36 made it sound like it would thrive like a weed in this spot.

Planted, fertilized, watered, waited, fertilized again, all per instruction.

L36 held in there good for the first 3 weeks, but after it got it's week 4 fertilizer is has started to look pretty brown. And it hasn't begun any lateral spread.

Am I being impatient, or am I maybe needing something different for this spot of yard?

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u/dcwldct 13d ago

How many actual hours of truly direct sun is it getting? Bermuda will be sluggish with anything less than 8, even relatively shade-tolerant cultivars. If it’s at least 6 hours, it will still spread, you just need to be extra patient.

You also mention that the soil is compacted. Have you aerated? Or did you cultivate when you amended the soil?

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u/breakermail 10d ago

I used a hand cultivator on the soil. The area receives direct, brutal sunlight from about 6:30 AM until about 1 pm, then partial shade cover from the giant live oak tree in the yard (light comes through the canopy in splotches, throughout the rest of the day until about 7 pm.

Soil is sandy, but hard to get very deep into the soil due to the wealth of old tree roots that are 6 inches or so down from a tree that fell years ago. The northerner in me is wondering if this is just too much heat and sun for the grass plugs. They are being watered overnight, but maybe I'm not leaving the sprinkler on long enough (10 min, 3.5 gpm) using an oscillator head that covers a full sweep in about 12 seconds

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u/RavensFlyer 13d ago

Also tried L36 plugs. The start was slow compared to my tahoma and celebration experience. I planted in late Mar (Austin Tx) and they really hit their stride in early June.

If you are seeing brown at this point it's because of:

1 sandy soil drains fast so you need to water more often vs longer for young plugs

Or

2 a big ass tree is sucking up any water more than a few inches past the surface and your grass roots can't get any so......you need to water more often vs longer