I disagree with Auteck's recommendation, and I'm a little surprised he recommended what he did. Your original grass seed mix selection was tall fescue, fine fescues and KBG. I suspect you have mostly tall fescue growing since you have bare spots. If the KBG in your original grass mix had germinated fully, then it should fill in bare areas in the sunnier parts of your lawn. I agree with him in that perennial rye is usually what is grown in your area, but there was no perennial rye in that original mix. Overseeding your lawn with it now will give you some throughout the whole lawn, but the bare spots will be all PR, and they will stand out against the TF you have now. My advice, use either all TF to overseed, or a mix that has similar percentages to your original mix. I would also stick with Pennington's as it is usually the best mix in the big box stores.

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.

I just recently layered in some mulched leaves, so it's mostly just starting, parts of it were started in the early summer, but i didn't put really any winter rye seed in the leaves, i instead did the surrounding area where i intend to expanding the veg garden next year. so what you're saying is that the extensive root system won't establish in time before the first lawn mowing??it still couldn't hurt right?? cuz i got a 50 lb bag for 12 bucks so it's not like i have to use it sparingly. I don't think i will put anymore layers on the sheet compost though, cuz i don't seem to be able to generate enough greens to keep my compost pile warm....and i have really been socking the greens to it...i cook more than ever now, and i told my wife this: the only thing that should end up in stinkn in the trash should be the baby's diapers, other than that, the kitchen scraps can go outside so don't trash em. not really gettn any heat from it...i even made 2 sides enclosed w/ straw bales.

When chopping and dropping you are changing the bio-chem of the top inch or so of soil. Now, if the remaining plants in the bed are already established and have roots down 4 or 5 inches, then no wait period is needed. They won't be bothered if the soil above them is suddenly dealing with fast bacterial growth breaking down the newly added organic material. But if you are putting down seeds or seedlings, you are talking about suddenly altering that first inch where they are trying to take hold and establish themselves. That's why I prefer to allow a few weeks for the dropped mulch to start breaking down and let the top of the bed achieve some equilibrium. The same is true for applying fertilizer, since I do an annual feeding with a complete organic fertilizer mix to replenish nutrients at the start of the season. I just want to give it some time for all the little soil workers to start digesting so the nutrients will be plant-available when the new veggies need them. Re: Oats - the point of planting oats is for them to grow massively in the fall and then winter kill. That *should* work for you in zone 8b, but I guess if you had a mild winter it may not work out. Your back-up plan is a good one: smother the buggers. As glib said, cardboard will work as well as burlap. Add some mulch on top of that (like the cut oats?) and all will be dead in a few weeks As far as timing goes - don't sweat it. Yes, you could have let them go a bit longer, but the only advantage is more biomass.