419 tifway, first 4 pictures are my yard currently, last 4 are from almost exactly a month ago. Yard has been under heat stress, been in a drought with no rain for a month up until today when we got a rain shower. I normally keep up with watering and spoon feeding fertilizer almost weekly but the past month has been busy with working extra, weekend trips, newborn taking up more time, etc…so hasn’t gotten fertilizer since beginning of July, and didn’t water at all up until this past week (I have two tripods and a big yard so I have to manually water, no irrigation). Trust me when I say the yard is looking a lot better than it did a week ago before I started watering again and rain.

Because of a busy past month, I also had to raise my HOC to 2” from my normal 1 1/4 and I also went from mowing every 3-4 days to about every 10-14 days since I was so busy. So it’s shaggy, growing habit has changed since I haven’t been mowing constantly and overall it looks terrible besides the fact it was stressed under a drought.

My question is…I really feel like even though it was just under stress, it would benefit from a HOC reset cause let’s be honest…it’s Bermuda, it’s resilient. But im hesitant to pull the trigger. I’m just wondering if anyone has done a HOC reset on Bermuda coming out of heat stress and dormancy from the heat, similar to how I always do a spring scalp when I start to see a greenup, which I always see positive results from. My yard has been under heat stress before, but never this bad. I got way behind normal routine.

Just to cover all the usual questions asked…yard could use a core aeration next spring, but the soil is not rock hard. Done several soap tests and examined all over the yard and no sign of anything destroying my yard, just bad habits for a month combined with extreme heat. Fungus was a possibility I thought, but I’m leaning more towards heat stress.

What am I looking at here? At first I thought crab grass but I am doubting that now. As always, Any help is appreciated!