That will be the LAST time i use winter ryegrass on my lawn. It is just not worth the hassle. I rather have a healthy/lush looking lawn 9 out of 12 months out of the year than having to deal with transitioning 6 months out of the year. I feel that by now, my lawn should be completely lush and thick, it is not. Its really hard to see the rye grass but it is still there, although it is not growing at all. You can only see it close to the pecan tree (upper left of pic), that area gets 6.5 hrs to 7.5 hours of sun. I want to say other than the shade it receives, the reason the perennial rye hasn't disappeared is bc May wasn't terribly hot (mid 80s) and June has been a cloudy/lower 90s month. I was mowing as short as i could too ( around 7/8"). I do gotta say that ANNUAL ryegrass does die much quicker than PERENNIAL. I used annual on my back yard since i have dogs and it died much quicker. Bare spots, installed an irrigation system and added some edging. along the driveway/street i removed about an inch of soil to make the yard level to the driveway. i also lifted up some sod to try to remove old tree roots. Spot leveling: worked out great. used a push broom and a rake. Bermuda grass seems to love to spread out on that sand.

I'm doing an experiment with unmowed St Augustine. Originally I did not think the grass would get taller than 10 inches, but it is easily 36 inches in one spot under a tree. Here is a picture I took last year. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate the benefits that lou mentioned above. I stopped mowing in October of 2011. The location is George West, TX on the edge of the Texas desert. Temps are above 95 from mid May through mid October with humidity running 40-50% most of the time. Since then I have only watered the grass when and where it was calling out to me for water. At no time have I watered more frequently than once per week. There is one spot under a tree on the east side of the house where I have not watered at all since 10/2011. In fact that is where the dog picture was taken. At the time it was about 30 inches high right there. Also since then I have not fertilized and used no insecticide or herbicide. As you can see there is no weed pressure at all - and I am surrounded by fields of King Ranch bluestem. There are places in the yard with plenty of bluestem, bermuda, and other weeds, but those areas are not part of this experiment. So the point of mentioning this is that taller St Aug will resist all the problems you might have with anything else. I always suggest people weld their mower at the highest position to prevent your well-meaning brother in lawn from doing you a favor and scalping your lawn back down "to where it should be." Tall St Aug (4 inches, not 40) is very lush looking and will solve your problems. Another issue you should watch for is drought stress near the sidewalk. Sidewalks take up sunlight all day and remain warm much longer that the soil under the grass. The soil near the sidewalk will get warmer during the day and remain warm until the next day. This tends to drive off the moisture through evaporation near the sidewalk and dry out the grass. The solution is to water more deeply, not more often. Generally I agree that your only problem is the grass roots are not up to speed yet. Give it another month and take another picture to compare. You should see improvement. Set your mower high, water deeply and infrequently, and fertilize and you will have a lawn like your neighbor. I prefer organic fertilizer because I am lazy and don't like to measure, but you can use chemical and get good results, too.

Only if it's dry. It's certainly optimal not to allow the grass blades to stay consistently wet, but it's absolutely critical that the sod stay moist for the first few weeks until it roots solidly (then back off watering slowly to give the roots time to adjust and grow in). So in a balance between the two, if the sod is dry, it must be watered regardless of the time of day. If moist, water at another time and try to go into the night-time period with dry blades. But realize you're going to end up with dew in all likelihood anyway and, frankly, a lot of the ballyhoo about wet grass is mostly applicable to very hot weather and consistently watering at night. Which you clearly have no plans to do. :-) I'll tell you a secret. You know, just between us here on the Internet, nobody else will see. :-) I water at night because the Sun is down, the winds are low to zero, and evaporation is near-zero. But since I'm only watering every fifteen days--absolute maximum (I actually watered exactly once in 2019)--I'm risking exactly nothing in terms of fungal disease on my lawn. It simply doesn't happen often enough to matter and I've established deep enough roots for my lawn to take care of itself (bluegrass, in Pennsylvania, a very different prospect to yours). It's not the fact of doing so that matters. It's the frequency.

Ideally you should start a new topic. I believe you did not get a normal amount of rain this winter. Have you been watering? I ask because I see some nut grass in the pictures, and nutgrass prefers really wet roots. Once you start watering deeply and infrequently, the nutgrass should go away/dormant without doing anything else. Raise your mower all the way to the top. The top is around 4 inches, but it it is 6 inches, so much the better. Look up above in this thread to the picture of my back yard with the cat in it. See how the cat is nestled down into the grass. In fact, since this is your back yard, you don't have to mow it at all. St Augustine will grow up to 32 inches tall. It's not a lot of fun to play in, but the point is the grass will do very well even when left alone. In mid April spray the yard with this product from Walmart. Atrazine is the important ingredient. This herbicide will wipe out everything except the St Augustine and bermuda. Spray on a day with little wind, walk backwards when you spray, and walk into the wind so any wind carries the spray away from you. This is a leaf misting spray, not a soil drench. You don't have to spray longer where the weeds are. It takes about 3 weeks before you realize all the weeds are dead and gone. If you are watering deeply and infrequently, both grasses should thrive. Ultimately the St Augustine will march through the bermuda and choke it out, because the tall St Augustine provides too much shade onto the common bermuda. This will take a few years or you can buy new St Augustine sod to speed up the process. You should not ever need to reseed into bermuda. If you have bermuda and it's not doing well, you're doing something wrong and even new seed will struggle. Besides, for you in Covina the best time to put down bermuda seed is in late June and July. If you put seed down now it won't germinate until late June or July when the soil is hot enough. Two more things: First, spray your yard with baby shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. If your yard is 1,000 square feet, put 3 ounces into the bottle of a hose end sprayer, fill the bottle with water, set the adjuster on any spray flow, and spray it all out evenly until it is gone. You can use any clear shampoo - it doesn't have to be baby shampoo. Whatever Dollar Tree has and you like the fragrance is fine. Second, call these feed stores to see if they have corn meal, soybean meal, or alfalfa pellets (ask for rabbit chow). Get prices for a 50 pound bag. Any one of these materials will do, so pick any one you like and spread it at a rate of 15 to 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Corn meal will be the cheapest at under $10. If they quote you $20 or $30, they're talking about corn gluten meal, not ordinary cornmeal. CGM works, too, but it costs more. All these are organic fertilizers. I think I mentioned to wait until late May to fertilize. If you use an organic, you can do it NOW (two weeks ago). Your soil looks gray and not healthy. If you want to get a soil test, send it to Logan Labs in Ohio. I know UCR and UCD do soil testing in California, but Logan Labs performs more tests on the soil for less money than the universities do. Get the $25 test. Let us know and we'll tell you where to send the results for a free reading telling you all about the soil. As a side note, it looks like someone has topdressed your yard too many times with too much soil. The soil level looks about 1.5 inches too high. It should be down closer to the edge of the concrete. If you ever chose to renovate, you should be removing soil and not bringing in more.