I WANT TO BE THE GUY EVERYONE ENVYs!!! I already was. Now I want to be the guy where people stand at the curb and drool (hey, it's extra, free irrigation and salivary amylase is good for soil water penetration). 25% Rye blend Unfortunately, that will preclude being the guy everybody envies. At the absolute outside, use 10% Rye. Better still, use none at all. Alleopathy...er, well, rye just keeps anything from growing around it. So, ive decided on my seed, i wont get into the seed or where it comes from because I've seen some of these threads get pretty nasty. its from Lesco and its a KBG so I feel confident. You will be fine, I'm sure. I managed a good lawn on Abbey bluegrass (read Scott's Cultivar du Jour). It was the best in the neighborhood, but not what I'd consider a showstopper. I'm using the Magnificent 3 (Midnight II, Moonlight, and Bedazzled). You may prefer something else. Yes, discussions get heated, but everybody has a preference (the guy down the street is putting in light green cultivars 'cause that's what he likes. Cool). I used Roundup (OK, cheap glyphosate, same thing) twice, five days apart, applied at bottle rate Down went the lawn, but I'd been irrigating and organically feeding so it was awake and growing fast. I saw a change on day 1. By day 7 it was dry straw. The photo progression is on my photo page if you want to see the old lawn and what die-out looks like. I did not rake. That was a partial mistake...but not as complete as I thought. A lot of that is suddenly deciding to grow in the damper conditions we're having, even at 95 degrees plus. The weather breaks Friday. Either that or I'm having a stroke and seeing things. One or the other. Rake. Or dethatch heavily, in each direction, and mow and bag it. I dethatched last weekend after figuring I failed, and it did a great job, plus I set the dethatcher to dig 1/4" deep furrows. Fifteen bags later (one every 500 square feet after a month of rotting that already took a lot of it) I was done. Reseeding will be shortly--maybe, if I need it. There I'll scratch the surface with my rake (or reborrow the dethatcher), clean it off, seed, reverse the rake, and work it in a bit. I'm certain to need to do that in spots. With elite KBG, germination ranges from 7 days (a few cultivars I saw, like Blue Velvet) to 21 (far more likely). Thirty days won't surprise me. I'll be irrigating (and still am since I'm not sure what's happening here) four times daily for five minutes each with an irrigation system. It keeps the surface constantly damp, but not squishy. Finally, I'm lacking confidence. I want my lawn to be deep, dark and dense by late spring. Have I not left myself enough time? would it be worth it to do it this year? i dont want to look like the neighborhood jackass. So, if anyone could lend me some confidence I think i'll do it....i'm 95% there, just doubting myself that I'll ruin current lawn and never regain the state I had by next year :( Your timing is good! August 15 is a great date, so you should have a pretty established lawn by October 15 when it starts to go into fall mode and slow growth (but grow roots like mad). Do it, do it, do it! The timing doesn't get much better than this. Even if dieout takes a full two weeks, you're in excellent time. That gives your lawn (assuming southern NY) September through November to grow and develop root systems, plus late March through late May before the weather starts to get spottily hot. Will it be perfect? Nope. Not next year. But it could be pretty durned nice if you take care of it and feed regularly. Perfect will have to wait until the first of never...there's always a small hole or a large weed somewhere. :-)

Hope both you and your husband are feeling better. It can take a long time to get over walking pneumonia -- for you, maybe especially, since it sounds as if you're eager to make up for lost time in the garden! :>)

Great pics! I think you many not need to apply any more phosphorus. That Greenview mulch has some phosphorus (3% I think) and I'm sure your starter fertilizer does too. Figure out how many pounds of phosphorus you have already applied: if 3% of a 30lb. bag of the greenview mulch is phosphorus, then each 30 lb. bag contains .9 lbs. phosphorus. If you used one bag per 600 feet the Greenview by itself gave you a little less than 1 lb. per thousand feet. And I imagine your starter was relatively high phosphorus too and probably made up the difference, but definitely check it out before thinking about adding any more. If you have applied enough phosphorus, look for a zero phosphorus fertilizer to use for the rest of the season - you don't want to overdo it. Greenview sells them I think. Looking good! Paul

Metal. You don't own this lawn. This is a lawn party that anyone can attend. I certainly did not say that owning a tractor without a RIO makes you comparable to a drunk driver who kills people. Check my post again and see if you can find that statement. As for taking the tags off mattress's and pillow's, that law stops when the end-user buys the product. It is there to protect the end-user from receiving product that does not contain virgin material. Your analogy with the C10 you own is totally off the mark. The issue here has to do with people on this forum telling other members that defeating/disconnecting safety devices is perfectly OK and then giving lessons on how to go about it. And I as I said earlier, if you think that the current RIO configuration does more harm than good, then invent something better, patent it and then licence it to the manufacturers. But if you're unable to come up with a better idea, then why not stop telling others how to disconnect them? What is being served by doing so? It does not matter that your tractor is not equipped with a RIO from the factory. I own 15 tractors that are also not equipped with one but I wouldn't help disable someone's tractor that came with one. What also doesn't matter is YOUR personal opinion about the effectiveness of RIO's. Your opinion is not shared by the people who wrote the law that mandates RIO's. If and when statistics show that the RIO law isn't working, then the legislators will come up with something different. Keep in mind that the legislators themselves didn't design the RIO's. They went to the industry and told them that the statistics showed far too many people (including children) were being run over by lawn/garden tractors when the operator put them into reverse. They then told the manufacturer's to come up with a solution to fix this problem on their own because it is in the best interests of the industry to collectively solve this problem. Every time someone is injured, it costs money to try and undo that injury. Whenever someone sues as a result of an injury, someone pays. More often than not, it is the various insurance companies that end up paying. Now, I hate insurance companies as much as the next guy but the fact remains that insurance companies have to make a profit just like any other company, to stay in business. If they have to constantly pay out money as a result of injuries and lawsuits, then those losses are reflected in the premiums everyone pays. And if someone is injured or killed, then who knows what sort of loss society as a whole may incur as a result? There's a much bigger picture here than just the one that shows your lawn.