Q: Hi Chris! I just moved into a new home in Raleigh, North Carolina. The lawn has been neglected, and looks really bad. It appears to be mainly Bermudagrass, but there’s lots of brown mixed in with the green. How can I get it back on track?

A: Thanks for writing in! Luckily for you, Bermudagrass is about as hard to get rid of as that slimy, burnt, greasy stuff that coats your barbecue grill. Supposedly that scunge adds to the overall grilling flavor experience, but it really just skeeves me out. If it weren’t the only thing holding my grill together, I’d probably rent a sandblaster to get rid of it. But I digress.

You see, some grass species have just leaves and roots. Others, like Bermudagrass have spreading tillers as well. These tillers spread outward from the base of the plant (where the leaves and roots meet) and pop up new plants all over the place. In fact, if you’ve ever seen one of those science fiction movies where the lower branches and roots of a forest start growing super fast and wrap around the legs of the expendable sidekick while dragging him or her deep into the earth to a particularly gruesome death, you’ll get an inkling of how fast Bermudagrass can spread under the right circumstances.

This fast spreading can be both good, and bad. You see, once those tillers grow, they don’t then “un-grow” once they are no longer needed. New ones keep doubling back over the old ones until you have a thick pile of these brown, tough, ropy things. Now, you’ve created a true monster. This is what is known as excessive thatch. That’s bad.

So, what to do!? Well, we’ve got to get rid of that excessive thatch. To do that, you need to dethatch. You do that with a dethatcher. See how that all works? The dethatcher has a bar on which a bunch of blades spin around vertically and rip up lines of dead thatch through the lawn. This exposes the soil and gives the existing plants room to breathe and spread. In particularly bad cases like I assume yours is, you’ll want to do it twice, in two different directions. This will make a sort of criss-cross pattern, and it will get you much closer to ideal circumstances. Once you have torn out a good amount of dead stuff, you’ll need to rake it away and get rid of it. Sorry. To me, that’s the real pain in the neck, but it is unavoidable.

NOW you’ve got a nice, thinned out lawn of crummy looking Bermudagrass. Trust me; we’re not done just yet. Now that you’ve gotten rid of the main problem, you’ll need to give the lawn a nudge to get back on track. I’d recommend a nice organic fertilizer, AND some overseeding with a good blend of high quality Bermudagrass seed. Basically, after dethatching, spread the seed all around the lawn and quickly brush it in with a rake. The seed will mix with the soil in the torn up areas, and will breathe some new life into your lawn. Just make sure to water, water, water! In about 6 weeks, you should notice a huge difference in lawn quality.

Good luck, and let me know how it comes out!