We have lots of bermuda in most areas around my little ranch, and the Agricultural Extension agents strongly recommend "Round Up." While some of us prefer to avoid chemicals, it's been pretty well shown in practice to be rapidly "digested" in the soil, and breaks down to less harmful stuff than what runs off when you wash your car in the driveway.

The big advantage of the fast breakdown is that usually you can start planting a very few days after you've put it on to kill the bermuda. One of our recent agents insisted that it was safe to plant in half the time listed on the can.

The other side of it is that if you kill the bermuda and then don't get the tilling done pretty quickly after you're sure it's dead, it's likely to come back by invasion from adjacent areas, possibly accompanied by a nice crop of those lovely Texas sandburs. They both like new empty spaces to charge in on.

The one problem with Round Up versus bermuda is that the grass has to be in a growing stage when you put it on, so it doesn't work very well during the several dormant stages of bermuda. It may not start to green by the time you're ready to break ground for garden crops.

If you just till bermuda in, most of the bits and pieces of bermuda will sprout right where they land. It's hard to break bermuda sod up fine enough to rake out all of the roots, although you probably should try if you're going for the bust-up method. Broken up pieces buried more than about 5 or 6 inches deep probably won't come back strong enough to get back to the surface and will eventually die, but anything shallower will be back like old sod by the next season, unless you keep tilling, frequently, through the whole bermuda growing seasons.

bobad's suggestion of tilling in a lot of mulch is a great one - but we have to point out that you have to till it first (when it isn't easy), before you can till in stuff to make it easier to till. It takes a couple of seasons (at least) to get good garden tilth, and you can't expect to do it all in a hurry.

John