Sod/Grass gurus, help!

I have about two areas that’s is top soil/sand mix each is probably 150x50 five or take some feet. No grass and no weeds.

Red-purple base sounds like barnyard grass. This is barnyardgrass.
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If growing in area already sodded with centipede you can use sethoxydim herbicide to kill. If sprouting in bare dirt that you plan to seed, you can spray with glyphosate (generic Roundup) which will be cheaper. Yes, you should kill as much as you can before you seed.

Read as much much as you can on seeding centipede as you can. Centipede seed takes a long time to germinate and establish. In the meantime lots of weeds will germinate in the bare lawn and they will be difficult to control with seedling centipede present.

If there is anyway you can find the $ to lay more sod I’d highly recommend it even it means you forgo a new purchase like furniture for the new house for a year. I’ve been where you are are at now - new house rich but cash poor - but the biggest mistake I made was not sodding my backyard from the get go. Knowing what I know now, I would have found a way to come up with extra cash to purchase more sod.

In Baton Rouge a pallet of centipede runs around $150 and covers 450 sq feet. You can lay yourself - get some friends to help.

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Yea I already bought 10 pallets and didn’t want to drop more. And it looks exactly like the picture you posted. Is it bad? Makes stickers? Dies easily?

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Barnyard grass is an annual grassy weed and its not difficult to control with the correct herbicide. It doesn’t make stickers. Use sethoxydim to control if it shows up in the centipede sod you just put down. Personally I’d use glyphosate to kill it in bare dirt areas I plan to seed.

Once you get centipede established use a pre-emergent herbicide in the fall (Sept-Oct) and spring (late Feb-Mar) like Dimension or Barricade to suppress lawn weeds. Of course you can not use a pre-emergent herbicide now if you plant grass seed. Pre-emergent herbicides are a game changer for control of annual lawn weeds.

I’ll let others with more experience than me with using centipede seed give you recommendations on how to best proceed. I’ve done it a couple times for small areas without good success but admittedly I didn’t give it the attention, watering, required.

I know it’s often best to seed centipede with another rapidly germinating annual grass seed like ryegrass that will later die back while the centipede establishes but your timing for ryegrass is off, hence my recommendation to read all you can on seeding centipede. As you know centipede seed is expensive, if it’s not done just right you won’t be successful.

I’ve bought one bag and will try in my bare areas while killing the other grass. Glad to hear it’s annual.

Any advice from anyone on growing from seed is greatly appreciated. Thanks Craw!

Heres some of the bare patches and mixtures. You can see where the sod is and the mixed grass is.

First (top) pic is barnyard grass, the third pic is Bermudagrass, and to be honest the 2nd and 4th pic look like centipede grass to me.

The advantage of centipede as stated by Au_251 is you can use herbicides like sethoxydim on it to control grassy weeds, like the barnyard grass and the Bermudagrass, in a centipede lawn.

Centipede grows much slower than St Augustine so it takes a longer to run and fill in areas.

I would suggest you take soil samples from around your yard and have them it analyzed, state on the form “lawn/centipede. Centipede likes acidic soils and the analysis will let you know if your soil needs an acidic amendment like elemental sulfur.

Again, hopefully some will come in to this post with their recommendations and experiences on planting centipede seed. You might want to consider bumping the 2019 lawn thread just to ask about recommendations on planting centipede seed. I’m thinking in that open area where you plan to use centipede seed it might be advisable this fall to plant some annual ryegrass just to help with weed suppression and possible erosion while your centipede seedlings become established - I’d like to see what others recommend.

OP - i forgot to state this in my earlier post, it might be best not to use any sethoxydim on your new centipede sod for a few months while it becomes established. Centipede is tolerant to the herbicide but not immune, you want to minimize stress to the new sod while it roots in and establishes.

OP - are you located in Louisiana?

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Is it ok to have the Bermuda and centipede to mix or is it ok to kill the Bermuda with the barnyard? Should I try to salvage it?

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Well in theory and practice you can allow the Bermuda and centipede to mix b/c you can later use sethoxydim to kill the Bermuda without killing the centipede - you would not be able to do that with St Augustine. With Bermudagrass at least you have a lawn grass. But I’ve got patches of Bermudagrass in my centipede lawn and though I kill it each year with sethoxydim it comes back. I’d hate to see you deal with that on a large scale.

My guess is you may be dealing with Bermudagrass long-term anyway. I would think if you can nuke both barnyardrass and Bermudagrass and plant the centipede seed that would be your best route.

Since you live in the BR area you can pick up a soil testing box from any of the independent retail nurseries (Cleggs, LA Nursery, Harbs Oasis) and mail it in to the LSU AgCenter, $10 per sample and each box can hold 3 samples.

Does the non-sodded area in photo contain some patches of centipede along with the barnyard grass and Bermudagrass?

Here is the link to the 2019 Lawn Thread if you want to bump it and pose your question on persons experiences and tips on planting centipede seed. Bootlegger is the lawn guru and if you can can get him to jump in it might be helpful. LINK

I recommend spraying to kill your Bermudagrass near the road. Of course spray the barnyard grass - do all you can to keep it from going to seed. Keep the patches of centipede in the bare area.

Also send an e-mail to Dr Ron Strahan rstrahan@agcenter.lsu.edu turf/lawn weed professor/extension specialist with the LSU AgCenter to ask for his tips/recommendation on planting centipede seed - include photos you’ve posted here. He’ll verify the weeds we I’d for you and the more he can see from photos of your situation the better he can help you. No doubt he deals with these questions daily.

The thing you’ll just need to be aware of is that weed seeds will continue to germinate along with the centipede seed but you have to wait until fall, winter & spring to deal with them until centipede seedling grass is mature and hardy enough to tolerate herbicides used on the weeds. Just about any of the herbicides we are recommending here that are safe to use on mature centipede lawns will caution you not to use them on seedling lawn grasses - mature lawn grasses can tolerate the herbicides, seedling lawns less so.

I suspect you’ll largely need to rely on pre-emergent lawn herbicides after the centipede germinates for a while until it matures suffiently to tolerate post-emergent herbicides. Honestly, I don’t know at what age centipede seedling grass can begin to tolerate post-emergent herbicides, but Dr. Strahan can guide you.

Since you are in the BR area, I’ve found you can purchase many of the pre-emergent and post-emergent herbicides, lawn and garden fertilizers and soil amendments like elemental sulfur at very good prices at Site One in the Industrialplex off of Siegen.