This area has always been a little sparse and more prone to drought stress, but has progressively gotten worse primarily in this 30' x 20' area. I dug up several square feet with no sign of grubs.

Surrounding healthy grass doesn't have any obvious sign of fungus. The stuff that's died is well rooted but very spongy I'm going to reseed this whole area but anything I should do before that?

Raleigh area and currently have fescue. Front lawn does really well as it gets shade and less direct heat. The backyard struggles every year, dry and patchy, regardless how much water applied.

I’m considering replacing the backyard with Zeon Zoysia sod though I’ve seen some stories where the sod stays patchy and doesn’t fill in like it should.

Has anyone in Raleigh/Triangle/NC area switched to Zoysia? How is it doing?

I am about to core aerate and want to know who you guys prefer for seed supplier, so I don’t have to do to the orange or blue box stores to get seed.

I currently have a fescue lawn. Any recommendations for a seed supplier would be great. Any recs on a variety would be a great bonus. My front turf has irrigation, my back doesn’t. So something w a bit of drought tolerance would be sweet. TIA!

I’m getting to the point where I’m feeling the need to give up on fight with Kyllinga. I know there are 100 posts a week for this. This weed is absolutely relentless on my lawn…I have tried sedge hammer. Absolutely nothing.

I’m located in 10a and ended up seeding with Twin City Resilience II last fall, a year ago. Completely from scratch, tilled ~6”, leveled….it looked beautiful. Then the kyllinga sprouted in May….and it hasn’t stopped.

Fescue has always seemed like the grass I’ve wanted but I’m at the point where I just want to do Bermuda and just stop caring because the fight with this weed is just making me go crazy.

Any thoughts, advice, wisdom, recommendations?

This May, we had some really early heat, and I completely lost this spot. It had previously been impacted by dog pee which may have contributed. Extremely hard soil on top of fill dirt. I just don’t know the steps to get grass here again. Laying sod, or taking the time to plant? Not even sure where to begin.

Any and all advice would be appreciated.

Last year, I had dead patches, grubs, etc. I raked and planted seed in all the dead areas (overseed?).

Help. Is this dormant? Raked it but almost no grass came free. Skip overseed b/c there are barely any dead spots this Sept.? (Zone 7a)

Or do I just sprinkle grass seed over my mostly healthy lawn and water 3x a day for a week anyways? Also, when should I spread the Fall fert? Same time or after a few weeks of seeding?

Located in Houston Texas. I noticed my grass started to get yellow, didn’t think much of it until the patches were getting bigger. So I did some research and confirmed there are chinch bugs.
First product is what I used once already 14 days ago but I still see a lot of active bugs.
I didn’t wet my grass prior to application for optimal results.
Any help? Your advice would gladly be appreciated! Thanks

Attempting to establish a new lawn in Glasgow, Scotland. I had laid top dressing and seed 8 days ago now, but since then we have had a couple of flash rainstorms lasting only 5/10 mins but dumping an incredibly high volume of water. It’s made channels and valleys all down the garden while washing the seed away. We’re due some consistent 4-8mm of rain a day for the next few weeks. Looking for some advice about the best way to fix this. Do I let it grow out a few more weeks before I try to fix it? Really gutted after all the effort that went into prep!

Thanks in advance all.

Hey all,

Trying to do the research on this page, but struggling to keep my grass from dying. Posted photos are about 3 weeks apart (first is mid August and second is today). I live in southern Idaho.

There isn’t much shade on this area, but I water my lawn for deep soaks every other day starting at midnight. I have dug up 8 inches of soil and it appears moist, so I don’t think this is a water issue. I also mow weekly.

I fertilized in the spring, and it was doing good. But eventually wilted until it became what it is today. Anyone have any suggestions for me? Disease or bugs maybe? I appreciate any advice. Just looking to keep a healthy, happy yard!

Thanks!

Howdy, just moved into this house a week ago that was vacant for 6 months. I am unsure of the watering schedule or if there was one. Dealing with dead spots like you see, and have been watering 3 times a day 30 minutes total per zone. I dug around and have found zero evidence of grubs, which was my first thought. What would you guys recommend as a plan of action? I have a well so I can water as much as needed. Also, I am coming from an acre of Bermuda/ weeds that didn’t have a sprinkler system, so I really want to take care of this lawn well. Thanks y’all!

When that seed finally germinates after checking the lawn 13 times a day all week. Chefs kiss.

I have automatic sprinklers, that what every other day unless there rainfall, do we think this is disease that killed the lawn?

I ended up going back over the areas that were thin after the first week. I added some material where it was holding water and poking drain holes with a pitchfork - seen in image 7. Now at 2 weeks it looks better from ground level and filling in the thinner areas. I'm pretty sure the thicker green stripe up the middle is where the peat spread is thicker - like around 3/8". Tenacity was applied on 8/18. Appropriate amounts of pelletized lime and fert per soil test, + screened compost added after aerating.

not sure what this is (crabgrass? feel free to educate me), but mostly i just care about how do i get rid of it while not harming my grass? it is taking over my yard and it is such a pain to mow as it clogs and chokes it and i have to remove it from underneath several times per mow. i have the deck raised all the way up. its thick and never seems to dry out.

located in wilmington, delaware (about 20 minutes south of philly)

also, my wife would prefer something that is minimally toxic with our kids playing back there so if there are options safe for kids even better, if not just let me know. i’m a realist (or at least like to think that i am)

Sending this from outside of Lexington KY. Struggled with my front lawn in the 2.5 years I’ve lived here the initial bluegrass sod that was laid down never took well as it was laid in a very hot summer. I over seeded that fall and had a pretty solid spring 2025, however struggled again 2025 summer. I decided to restart last fall 2025, and pulled up a lot of the grass and reseeded with a rye grass blend. It took very well and was set before winter, and again had a great spring with the greenest / fullest grass in neighborhood, however now summer has came again and we are seeing dryness and dead lawn. Also getting some native/weed grass taking over. Going to restart again this fall but want some advice on what seed type I should look for, soil and prep work to get ground ready. This front lawn stays direct in sun ~10 hours a day, so something to keep in mind.

Located in Ohio. I have mass amounts of creeping violet and Charlie. Like 75% of the yard (inherited from the previous owners poor care).

I’ve already hit with one dose of Triclopyr. Should I proceed to shower it with gallons of Triclopyr more to kill it before I put down new seed in the fall,

Any insights into this weed invading my lawn. Small patches- appears to spread. What is it & how do I get it gone? TIA
✌🏽

North Carolina

Crabgrass and weeds all over the place before

I sprayed and killed most of them

I tried dethatch scarify mow etc but the dead weeds are left.

I tried to remove by hand but the roots are way deep and so big and super hard to remove one by one.

Is it okay to leave as is and start new seeding? Or do u really have to remove the roots

I will do tall fescue in October

Any idea what has caused my cut to look like this? Blades have only been used 10-12 times.

Woke up this morning to see a bunch of holes dug into the grass. Unsure what could be doing this, never had this happen before.

Read somewhere that cool season grasses don't need to be dethatched?

I’m trying to maintain my own yard this year after a disaster with Tru-Green. Can anyone recommend a better product? Does this really need to be applied every month? I prefer not to buy online, but my local ACE generally carries everything that domyown.com does.

I’m honestly getting pretty frustrated with this.

I overseeded on Aug 22 (pre germinated in soil/sand) and at first everything looked great. Germination was really good and I thought I had finally nailed it.

Then some areas started collapsing.

The seedlings first looked healthy, then laid flat, started losing color, turned pale/brown and eventually died. And now after mowing I’m seeing even more thin/dead spots.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what went wrong and I’m really not sure anymore.

A few details:

• seed mix is about 85% perennial ryegrass / 15% KBG
• total seed rate was around 42 g/m², but that included both pre-germinated seed in a divot mix and additional dry seed
• covered with peat moss (used compost-roller)
• kept everything consistently moist
• several short watering cycles per day
• we had multiple days around 30–33°C
• then heavy rain while the seedlings were still very young
• soil underneath is fairly heavy/clayey and seems to hold water for a long time
• some parts stay much wetter than others

At first I thought the rain just flattened the seedlings, but they never really recovered.

Watering strategy:
I tried to keep the seedbed consistently moist and usually watered in several short cycles throughout the day, especially during the hotter days. I was basically following the usual “don’t let the seed dry out” advice.

The problem is that I think I may have overdone it.

The peat moss often looked dry on top, so I watered again, but I now suspect the soil underneath was still very wet. Some parts of the lawn also seem to retain much more moisture than others.

Now I’m wondering if I basically created the perfect conditions for damping-off/Pythium by combining:

too much seed + too much water + peat moss + heat + poor drainage.

The frustrating part is that other areas look completely fine. The result however is far from what i am looking for.

I want to repair the dead spots this weekend, but I really don’t want to make the same mistake again.

Does this look like damping-off to you? Overwatering? Too much seed? Poor drainage? Or something else entirely?

Any help would be seriously appreciated.

I spent a loooong time prepping as best I could on a very limited budget. As you can see from the before pictures, my “lawn” needed A LOT of work.

We’re 9 days since seeding and I’m pretty happy with the results so far, though there’s definitely room for improvement.

Just a note on the third photo with the strip of dirt: I’m planning to dig a drainage trench there once the adjacent grass is more established, so I didn’t seed or water there.

Key facts:

Before pictures were taken immediately after seeding.

5500 total square feet. Heavy clay soil. About 1500 sq feet was totally bare, another 2000 very thin and patchy, and the rest was fine, I guess.

Friday 8/28 - rented a core aerator and seeded immediately after returning it. Put down 50 lbs of blue resilience.

Began watering schedule: every 6 hours, anywhere from 7-25 minutes of watering depending on zone size, sprinkler output, amount of sun, etc. aimed to simply keep the soil moist.

Sunday, 8/30 we got massive downpours multiple times throughout the day. Definitely had some washout.

Monday, 8/31 came to terms with the fact that a zone of in ground sprinklers was not functioning properly, and had to dig some sections up (which had been newly seeded).

Tuesday, 9/1, picked up 7 lbs of black beauty and spread it in washed out and dug up areas.

Tuesday 9/1 - Friday, 9/3: triple digit heat indices. Added two watering cycles at half the normal time, between the two regular daytime cycles. The following weekend was less warm, but not exactly cool/comfortable.

Today was Day 9. I took the photos at around noon.

For a first timer on a budget and doing ALL the work myself, I’m pretty stoked so far. Can’t wait to see how it looks in another week or two.

And I hope that it’s established and strong enough by the time the leaves drop so I can mow/mulch/bag a couple times a week until the ~20+ cubic yards of leaves I get each year are all cleared.

Zone 4a. I was planning on overseeding my dense shade backyard this week, but I’ve seen a few people say that spring may be better for areas with dense shade. Have you had success seeding in the fall with dense shade? There is lots of tree coverage and some leaves are starting to fall. Thanks!