Up front, my comments will be less than inspiring.

As far as the residual Bermuda, you will learn to live with it. This is not an option. Next time you're watching our illustrious TX Rangers at home, check out left center field. If you look closely you will see a green that doesn't match the rest. That's because there's a bunch of common Bermuda. After spending a lot of money to eradicate it, they learned to live with it.

Contrary to belief, I think Zoysia is a realtively high maint. turf in TX as compared to either Bermuda or St Aug. I am not a fan of scalping by Zoysia will definitely benefit from a spring scalp that is bagged. It may be slower growing than either Bermuda or St Aug but it is a gadzillion times thicker also. It needs to be mowed with a reel mower with sharp blades at every third day. Did I mention sharp blades. I had a lawn care co. and a client had Zoysia. The only way we could mow it with a rotary mower was to put fresh blades on for that job. Rotary mowers can really be nasty on Zoysia.

Here is what I would try before surrendering and letting it convert to Bermuda.

Apply a layer or weed free compost. Even though I lvoe chemicals, there is nothing like good compost to make a yard go right side up.

Learn how to sharpen your rotary mower blades and do it at least 2X a month. A reel mower would be better but they're expensive and there is an art to maintaining those blades.

Make sure you're getting at least a 1/2 inch column of water every 5 days during the heat of the summer.

Switch over to a premium slow release fertilizer.

That's all I can think of right now after working 3rd shift.

There are NO warm season grasses that like shade. Period.

Zoysia is a great grass in the sun, but it does need fertilizing and good soil. It also benefits from Ironite, in TX.

We finally got mostly shade in our back yard, so we replaced the zoysia there, with dwarf mondo, after adding 4-6" overall, of very carefully mixed conditioned soil.

Our zoysia still is doing great, in the sun areas, though.

My opinion is that it just won't grow in shade. Our side yard and the strip between the street and sidewalk get plenty of sun, and the Zoysia is thick and healthy there. The front yard has two very large live oak trees and the St. Augustine wouldn't grow. We replaced all the grass we had with a variety of more shade tolerant Zoysia (a little shade tolerant!) It simply won't grow under the trees. We currently have a large dirt patch. Our subdivision requires grass, so I'm not sure what we will do under those trees! We've already made the front beds in front of the house as large as we possibly can and planted them with shade loving plant.

Even though it's not what I was hoping to hear, I really appreciate the responses. Probably should've done a bit more homework before investing the extra $ in the Zoysia.

The things that mislead me is I was of the understanding that it would grow in some shade and that it supposedly crowded out all weeds. False and false.

I tried ironite in our front yard and will have to see if that does anything. If not, guess I'll have to learn to live with a sparse lawn or try a plan "b"....

I put in zoysia March 09 in a large area, mostly shaded (probably 20% later afternoon sun at most) with a couple of patches that get mostly sun.

The shaded areas grow best. The sunny area dry out super fast and I have to do a lot more to keep them up.

It has mostly crowded out the weeds in the shady areas. Not 100%, but it's getting there if I keep up with the maintenance.

This pic is fairly recent. I'd just cut down two trees - one by the street and one behind the playhouse. That gives a lot more sun and since then, those patches hit by the direct sun are not doing as well as the heavily shaded areas. The area in the foreground gets the most sun late afternoon and has a fair bit of weeds, but since this pic was taken (late May), I've managed to control the weeds better. Also, the whole area was one big field of weeds before I started. I removed some, but not all, so figure we'll be fighting weeds for awhile. The whole area is still a work in progress.

I'm guessing you have a more shade tolerant variety. Do you know which it is?

All I know is that I wouldn't recommend El Toro. Even in many of the full sun areas it's not looking great...

It's El Toro, bought from here http://www.delsgrass.com/eltorozoysia/

When I planted, it was during a few weeks of rain, then we hit major drought and 100+ temps for months. The whole thing turned very yellow when we were out of town for a couple of weeks. Then it came back.... There are a couple of patches that have taken awhile to rejuvenate, but overall, the shady areas work best.

On another note, in the front (left of this picture) I planted shadow turf plugs under the large elm tree (read: 90% shade). It's taken 2 years as I planted them about 2-3ft apart instead of 1 ft apart (they're very expensive!), but finally it's grown in and is BEAUTIFUL. It is my favourite grass. Does very very well in the shade and needs very little water.

I have no info on Zoysia, but did some investigation on Shadow Turf for the same reasons that you are interested. Check out this thread.

Pam

Here is a link that might be useful: Shadow Turf topic

Duh, I just realized that Shadow Turf is Zoysia :-)

Anyway, dchall_san_antonio trialled it

From Howard Garrett, via the DMN:
Zoysia is a good grass for full sun and lightly shaded areas. It has similar maintenance requirements as St. Augustine and is slow growing. That can be good news, on the one hand, because it doesn't need to be mowed or edged as often as other turf grasses. That means the only practical way of planting it is by solid sod.

Zoysia wears out easily from foot, pet or vehicle traffic and it doesn't repair easily.

There are zoysia varieties and several cultivars that range widely in appearance and management needs. They all will grow well under the basic organic program and a sensible watering schedule.

The best advice I can give you is to purchase solid sod from local retailers and never buy plugs mail order.

Here is a link that might be useful: Howard Garrett's column