The idea behind raising mowing height in the dog days of summer is to keep from allowing the lawn to burn. What type of Bermuda do you have, is it a hybrid or standard variation? What height do you currently cut? How much and often are you watering? How established is the lawn? Where are you located? Have you read the Bermuda Bible by Texas Weed, if not, you need to. Google it and spend 30 minutes reading, it will change the appearance of your lawn forever. I have a hybrid Bermuda, I cut at 1". In July and August I may raise my mowing height by a 1/4" to 1/2" if it is excessively hot and or dry. Assuming you have a rotary mower place it on a level surface and measure the height from the blade to the surface. There should be adjustment levers on the front or back wheels or both. Raise them one notch and re measure, what is the difference from your first measurement to the new measurement? That is how much you have raised the mowing height.

You should see my old yard! :) I just get tired of hot weather in the summer and want shade instead. Lol. I checked out your blog and it says you water buffalo grass every 10 days? That's what I do with my st augustine grass too (in Midlothian, Texas located south of Dallas). Just moved to the hill country west of Austin, Texas. With frequent water restriction, my old habit of watering lawn very infrequently will come handy but it depends on the rules, I suppose. I've seen crazy rules where you can only water from midnight to 5am! Thank goodness, my new house comes with sprinkler system but I still hate it because they get in the way of landscaping for sure. Keep it in mind, it seems that ALL grass need deep watering infrequently to look decent/good which also to benefit trees what was my main focus but it turns out it works pretty good for grass too. 'Floratam' St Aug is the most drought hardy but not so strong cold hardy. When it comes to absolutely doing nothing, that's another story! When it comes to doing almost nothing in Houston, zoysia grass seem to do be best overall (some trees around). Not sure about Midlothian area. Bermuda is the king for sunny area but no idea for zoysia in more shady area. I need to get some buffalo plugs for my parents in law. They NEVER water lawn. Just trees if they even remember to do it. Blue Gramma too. I want to see how they do it. I SHOULD have dug up this unusual grass that NOBODY seemed to know what exactly it is. I posted a thread about it earlier. I love this grass. I can't believe I moved away without digging up a piece from the park where it was. :( Bermuda grass could not invade it. That was what caught my attention. It just slowly expanded out over the past few years.

The most frequent watering occurred during June, about once a week, whenever the grass looked stressed. I always water until I can easily insert a screwdriver into the ground 7-8 inches. During July and August, I hardly watered at all due to the rain and humidity. Right now I'm back to watering about every 10 days, but again I make each watering session count. I'm hoping this will 'train' the grass so it requires even less water next summer.

Just wanted to warn people about getting a rash from working with/around juniper. It gives me a poison-ivy-like rash that is much more short-lived but still very irritating and gross-looking for a few days. Knowing how the grass is getting into the juniper would be good to formulate your defense strategy. If it is creeping in from the yard, you will need a border barrier to make it stop doing that. If it is coming from seeds, you may want to mow more often and/or mow with the clippings going away from the juniper. If you are able to add new mulch, as you mentioned, you could use newspaper or cardboard as a smotherer, which would be easier to work with than a weed fabric or plastic. And newspaper or cardboard would not end-up creating a bigger problem if/when grass starts growing again. There is no need or reason to remove the existing mulch first. If you put an inorganic barrier under the juniper, grass and other weeds can still germinate in the mulch on top of it. Then you're back to square one, only then you would also have the fabric or plastic to deal with. Eventually, the soil under an inorganic barrier will become devoid of nutrients causing the juniper to be unhealthy.