It was 37F. this morning in Raleigh, but top growth has not stopped. It has been growing rather quickly sience April 16. Meh, your lawn looks awesome for such a short time and having all that dirty snow on it for months!! I just seeded today a small area of my yard with A-4 bentgrass. I just want to see what it does during the summer with homeowner care treatment. The golf courses here are loaded with bentgrass, but they have an Army of people, chemicals, tons of water, and a virtual open check book to buy anything they want to keep the grass green all year long. Keep the pictures coming...

I'd give up early spring greening if I didn't have to deal with half dead patches of grass until May. If my lawn was Rye or TTTF instead of creeping bentgrass, I would have had to reseed a ton of little circles everywhere. Thank god for the stolon spreading ability of bent. No winterizer for me this fall. I'd rather have brown dormant ALIVE grass than snow mold EVERYWHERE. I'm also putting down Daconil before the first snowfall to give me some extra help. I think winterizer is more for people who live south of the constant winter snow field. I think I read somewhere that it takes about 20-30 days to start snow mold growth, which we definitely get here EVERY winter.

LOL morpheus. Yeah see grass, this can happen to you if you don't shape up and grow some roots. I don't see why you can't grow this if you're in the mood to mow and water a lot. Tak2w, after my last update the grass starting to look like it was dying on the side bordering the street. As if heat from the street was baking the grass. And I got all panicky and didn't know what to do but long story short is the grass looks like it's rebounding after some more careful watering. It's important to note though that even with a lot of brown spots it still is nicer looking the the neighboring bermuda at this point. The quality ratings I've seen all show a big dip in May and June then it picks up again in June which I don't understand but I'm hopeful that it's not the beginning of the end. I just sprinkled a little seed in some of the spots just to see if it will help with the appearance any. I also have some colonial bent that I ordered and will be experimenting with that too.

The very best way is to hire a tractor (and driver) with a box blade. If it is a traditional SoCal yard, it will take about 30 minutes. Or you can DIY with some effort. Probably the hardest part is to figure out whether you need to remove soil that's already there. I'm going out on a limb here, because I see a lot more (LOT MORE) yards needing to remove soil, but I'm going to suggest you should remove soil. If the soil is higher than the surrounding hardscape, it should be removed down to, more or less, level with a slight crown in the middle for drainage. Once that is done you can deal with high and low spots. Assuming the grass is gone, then look for low spots to fill with sand. Smooth that off with a long 2x4 board with some weight on it. Or you can drag a piece of wire fencing around. I made a chain link drag with rope, wood, bag of sand (for weight), and fencing. It worked great for a small area. So with the drag you drag that around until it looks perfect. Then spray it all down with a mist of water to encourage the sand to settle without washing it away. Let that dry and fill the new low spots with more sand. Drag, water, and evaluate again. After about 3 cycles of that you should have a relatively perfect surface. Don't walk on that until the grass is down. Sand works better than topsoil for this because topsoil always has little clods in it. Even a 1/4-inch clod will make you scream as it creates a furrow in the sand. You can make it putting-green smooth, which is a great goal. After the sod is down, then use a roller to press the bottom of the sod down onto the surface of the soil/sand. Roots will not grow through the air to reach the ground. Of if it is a small area, you can achieve the same result by walking on every square inch of sod to press it down. Your weight is perfect for this. You might want the sand to be moist/firm when you do this. Dry sand might push around and defeat the purpose of leveling.