Clubbing baby seals? Our version of that is tilling the area to become a lawn. DON'T! So basically you need a lawn care mental make over. I'll get to that for you. It is pretty easy but it is equally easy to really do it wrong. I would suggest a grass called Shadow Turf. It is a variety of zoysia that really does grow in the shade. I'll post a picture after saying a few words about it. Shadow Turf was developed in West Texas at Texas Tech University along with Frontier Hybrids, a corn hybriding lab, in Abernathy, Texas. The owner had an interest in grasses and got two really good ones on the market before he passed away. The other one is Tech Turf, a buffalo grass hybrid. Tech Turf requires FULL sun while Shadow Turf only tolerates full sun. Shadow Turf really thrives in the shade. In the photo below, the Shadow Turf is under an English walnut tree. I had to duck to walk under the tree, so the canopy is probably down to 4-5 feet. You can see the density of the shade from the sunlight coming through the tree. The house faces west and has a huge tree across the street. Sunlight on the grass is limited to just a couple hours from noon to 3pm. That lawn was plugged on 12-inch centers about 18 months before I took the picture. The location is Abernathy, TX (obviously not a coincidence - Abernathy is a one-horse town). The reason I took that pic was to show where the grass had not quite fully filled in after 18 months. That spot is the least sunny part of the yard and probably receives no direct sunlight at all. Still the 1-inch grass plugs had spread to six inches or so in diameter. Clearly the rest of the lawn had filled in. Shadow Turf is a very dense, sod forming turf that might work for you in your application. Another variety of shade tolerant zoysia is called UC Verde. It was developed in California. It has a good reputation for the short time it has been out. I would check prices for both. Shadow Turf is not cheap. I paid about $85 for a flat of plugs. It spreads quickly, though, once it pops. I planted in May and by mid July I thought it was dead. SUDDENLY it was everywhere. It had been sending rhizomes around underground, and they all popped at once. Shadow Turf is moderately compatible with bermuda. Both can be mowed very low. Shadow Turf can also grow taller but when you do that, it is like bermuda in that when you mow the blades off the stems, it looks stemmy and brown. Getting the blades back on the ST takes a little time. It works much better mowed low and/or mowed often. Here are the basics of lawn care (lawn care mental make over). If you follow these guidelines you'll be okay even if all you have is weeds. Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an hour in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. Mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. Bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses are the most dense when mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. Dense grass shades out weeds and uses less water when tall. Dense grass feeds the deep roots you're developing in 1 above. Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 4 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above.

I imagine many people owe it to dchall for their improved lawns. Yes I wrote the FAQ. About 5 years ago it was posted on some other websites which had hit counters. I counted 75,000 hits before they redesigned the sites and removed the counters. That was a long time ago. I'm glad I have been able to help. Sometimes I find it hard to restrain myself from suggesting organic fertilizers, but some people will never go for having it shoved down their throats. I firmly believe that many lawn problems can be fixed or greatly improved by throwing organic fertilizer at it. Instead many will throw more and more synthetic fertilizer and make things worse. More organics always helps. More synthetics often does not help and can kill your lawn. One of the gurus on another forum has used more than 1,000 pounds of organics per 1,000 square feet on his lawn over the course of a season. Yes, he might possibly have the best lawn in the country. He's in SE PA and his KBG lawn remains green all winter. That's unheard of. As far as I know I am the first person to advocate using corn meal (too expensive this year) or other grains instead of commercially bagged organic fertilizer. Some people before me here at GW had been using used coffee grounds, which is essentially the same thing as ground up grains. There were others who hinted at the use of protein sources rather than chemicals, but nobody ever put it into a tight package. I spent hours one day walking around a feed store reading every label on every product. Did you know that dog food is the same as organic fertilizer? I tried it and it worked. Once I realized the cost savings for this approach to lawn care, suddenly an organic approach was on par with the chemical approach. Nobody wanted to pay $75 per 1,000 square feet for compost. And hardly anyone wanted to pay $15 per 1,000 for organic fertilizer. But a lot of people were willing to pay $2.50 per 1,000 to give corn meal (or alfalfa pellets) a try. That was then. Costs have come up for everything since 2002. Frankly I don't care if my suggestions are proved to be wrong or otherwise misguided. If there is a better solution, I'm going to be all over it. Several years ago I 'invented' a method for softening hard soil using a soaker hose. The problem with it was it took weeks to months to see the benefit. Last year, at the suggestion of some geniuses on another lawn forum, I tried spraying baby shampoo on my hardened soil before irrigating. A few days later the soil was soft. I am not going to cling to the soaker hose method when the baby shampoo is so easy to do.

A few things first...while technically you are in 7B, it's not the whole story. USDA hardiness zones are useful, but they can be misleading. Since it only refers to the average low temps of a region it doesn't describe the summer conditions. So while you are in 7B, so are parts of New Jersey. England ranges from 8-10, which is the same as Florida. So what's my point? My point is a cool season grass might not be the best idea since your summers can be brutally hot and humid. While you seeded tall fescue, I would bet money that what you have growing and ready for a mow after 9 days is NOT tall fescue. Unfortunately it's probably weeds. Now is a pretty lousy time to seed a cool season grass, you really should wait till early fall, when the heat and humidity break. Of the cool season grasses tall fescue is probably the best suited to the transition zone, and is grown with some success in Georgia. Another option might be hybrid bluegrass which is a cross between Kentucky and Texas bluegrass. Supposedly it deals well with heat and drought, and spreads via rhizomes, it might be a good fit for your location, and it should stay green most of the year unlike warm season grasses. Tall fescue is a bunch grass, with a bit of spreading ability, but don't expect anything near bluegrass, or the warm season grasses (Bermuda, St. Augustine, Zoysia, Centipede, Paspalum). Not sure what you would use as a creeping grass if you were to overseed your tall fescue, since KBG would be a poor choice Another thing to consider is most grass, if you want it to look nice, requires maintenance in the form of mowing, fertilizing, watering, etc. If you are not that picky about what your lawn looks like, the best option for you might be K-31 tall fescue. K-31 was basically the first tall fescue developed for lawns. It is wide bladed, light to medium green, and coarse in texture, but it is very tolerant of heat, disease, and drought that would do in most of the newer turf type tall fescues. If you want to go with a warm season grass the time to seed those are in the late spring, early summer, but that is really only for Bermuda or Centipede. Zoysia would be a good choice, but you would have to get sod since zoysia from seed is really not an option. Hope this helps, don't hesitate to ask questions.

When bermuda grows up tall it is growing on vertical stems. When you mow it very low repeatedly, the stems must grow out horizontally under the mower's blade for the plant to survive. When it is tall and you mow it short, all you see is the stems sticking up. All the grass blades are mowed off. When the stems are all growing horizontally the blades come out of those stems vertically and only those get mowed off. If you want to mow at 1.5 inches it is a good idea to scalp it down to 1.25 or 1 inch and let the blades grow out from the shorter stems. Then when you mow at 1.5, you'll be cutting the blades and not the stems. You'll have to gradually back off on the frequency and increase the duration until you are back to one inch once per week. Start by skipping an hour and watering every other hour still at 3 minutes. Watch the grass to see if it becomes wilty. Do you know how long it takes to get an inch of water? The next day water about 1/4 inch first thing in the morning and watch it. Then at noon water another 1/4-inch. Repeat at dinner time while the sun's still up. The next day water 1/2 inch first thing in the morning and watch it. If it dries out before the end of the day, give it another 1/2 inch. The following day try waiting until noon and give it 1/2 inch. It might dry out by the end of the day but let it go until the next morning. If it looks good the following morning repeat the 1/2 inch at noon. Repeat that until it looks good in the evening without looking dried out. It should look fine the next morning. Then I would bump it up to 3/4 inch applied in the morning and watch for drying in the evening. If it looks good the next morning, you're on your way. This is a general guideline showing how to gradually switch it. You can change this up as you see it working for you. Where are you in AZ? If you're in the mountains with pine trees it might make a difference.