I think St Augustine does better than bermuda when overseeded with rye. The problem is the tall rye shades out the lower plants. St Aug grows higher to begin with and should compete better for sunlight. Still, I wouldn't do it. If you are mowing at the mower's highest setting and only watering once a month in the winter, you should not see any dandelions. When you start watering again, be sure to apply a full inch and allow the ground to dry out for a couple of weeks before watering again. As the temps increase you can increase the frequency to 2 weeks and then weekly. Henbit and horseherb are buggers. Fortunately they pull out pretty easily. If you want to spray them one time with a chemical product, let me know. It will wipe them out for the rest of the season.

Excellent points from gardenbear. Clover makes a nice permanent "turf." Your watering is way off. What you are doing is encouraging very shallow roots. What you need is very deep roots to handle the heat. In order to get deep roots you need to space out the intervals and water longer. We talk about deep and infrequent as the basic guidelines for watering. Deep means one full inch all at one time. Watering at 4 and 5 is still considered "all at one time." Just don't water 1/7 inch every day. Infrequent means once per month in the cool months and once per week in the heat of summer. By watering deep and then not watering for a long time, the grass roots will dive deeper looking for that water stored deeper in the soil. You cannot go cold turkey to get to deep and infrequent. Start by stretching the interval and watering a little longer. You should also measure how much your sprinkler puts out in 15 minutes. Actually use tuna or cat food cans to measure how long it takes to fill them. That is an inch. My system takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. My neighbor takes 15 minutes. You really need to measure your own system. Deep watering will be better for any trees you have left, too. NOW is the time to redo your lawn. Spring is NOT the time to redo your lawn. If you want to do a real lawn renovation, start now. For 700 square feet it should not be much work. Let us know if that is what you want to do.

Rhizo, you've given me enough information to allow me to lighten my burden this winter. No overseeding for me. We have a mix of grasses in our lawn, with St.Augustine in the back and in some cool spots under the shade trees. I finally learned what SAD was, so thanks for that too. I love the St.A but must be content with it in the back yard only. Too sunny on the western exposure. Well, I'll be letting my grass REST this winter. But we do have our newly cleared "back forty", where ancient azaleas were cut down and their locations had no grass, and I am wondering if this fall would be a good time to overseed with the crimson clover? Should I just let it grow and not cut it until spring? We will NOT be tilling the ground, just covering it up so it won't be a mud wallow over the winter. Or would that area, about 25x100, be fine for the annual rye grass? Actually, we bought that portion of our neighbor's lot inside the city here, and took out everything (the 50 yr old mostly dead azaleas, trash camphor trees) except we left three young pecans and 2 huge ancient sasanquas. I wanted to sod it with St.A, but DH said too much preparation required, so we'll just do the best we can.

Where in the world are you? Have you asked the people at your local office of your state universities Cooperative Extension Service?