As Andy said earlier, there is no "best" cultivar, but if you want to quantify it, then I will try to help you out. The best data that we have to quantify turfgrass is the NTEP trials. The latest KBG trial just ended, so those cultivars are the latest ones with 5 years of data. Unfortunately the data you should pay attention to (the NJ sites since you are in Phily) has the grass cut very short, much shorter than you will probably keep it for your lawn, but if you think about it, the darkest short KBG should be the darkest longer KBG, but this is only an assumption. So if you follow that logic, lets take a look at your choices. Your compact midnight is Nu Destiny. In the NTEP NuDestiny scored 6.1 overall for schedule B (1-2 inches mowing height, irrigation to prevent dormancy, some herbicide used to prevent stand loss), and 7.3 in NJ1(North Brunswick) and 5.2 at NJ2 (Adelphia). The best overall scored 6.4, so 6.1 is close, but in the NJ1 scores NuDestiny scored second best for overall quality (highest was 7.6 for Excursion), and was close to the top at NJ2 (6.3 was the highest for two cultivars). So statistically NuDestiny is close enough to the top where it shouldn't be an issue. Most of the compact midnights are highly conserved, so they perform similarly as a group with minor variations. Bewitched scored 6.2 overall, with 6.1's at both NJ locations. This was the top performer for the compact family in this test. It is pretty much the go to for compacts, many people use it for just such a reason. Bedazzled was tested in the 2000 NTEP, it's scores were impressive. It was a 5.8 overall for schedule B, and it's NJ score was 6.0. Again, pretty much the best compact midnight tested in that trial, a go to for compact america's. Now you can spend hours looking at the data especially in other categories, but some if you want real world examples with photos, you have to know where to look. Shoot me an email and I will direct you to such a place. chorvath360@hotmail.com (don't worry, I am not going to send you prices on ED drugs. If you search my handle you will see that I have been on this forum for years and have replied to many posts.)

If the sunny area is the front lawn and the shady area is the back, I might do both, but if one yard has both sun and shade, I'm not sure how you'd lay the sod to get it to look nice. I tried some RTF several years ago (probably when it first came out) and was disappointed with the results. It was mostly my fault, though. I didn't start over or even do anything to prepare the soil, and I didn't water it several times a day until it got started. I just threw the seed down and hoped for the best. I also contacted the folks who make it, and did some more research, but ultimately decided I wanted a lawn that uses even less water than the RTF does, so I switched to native grasses. From what I learned, the key to being satisfied with RTF is to set realistic expectations. The marketing materials are truthful, but it's easy to read more into them than what they really say, so people tend to get their hopes up pretty high. RTF spreads, but it does so more slowly than KBG, so it won't fill in as fast as KBG, but it will fill in. Also, many people bought WaterSaver RTF seeds thinking all of the seeds were RTF, but the RTF actually made up less than a third of the total seed. I think that if you go in with the right expectations, you'll be happier with the final results.

Sounds like you and your hubby are opposites in many ways. I have a perfectly fine organic StAugustine lawn in San Antonio. I guess my lawn in George West is organic, too. I haven't put anything on it but I have a bag of alfalfa in the garage. By the way, where are you getting alfalfa in Pasadena? Pasadena is critical information. I was going to suggest Marathon, Marathon II (dwarf Marathon), or Marathon III (dwarf Marathon II). You might like the taller Marathon variety. If you have full sun, then either Kentucky bluegrass or bermuda sod (Tif 419) would work. Please resist tilling. You can restore your soil to perfect health in just a few weeks using an organic approach. If you have time, you can cover it in mulch and moisten it. A little bit of moisture over mulched soil will allow the beneficial fungi to return and repopulate the soil. Those are the guys you really need. Once they are back in full bloom, your soil will be magically soft all without tilling. If you don't have time for that, spray your soil with 3 ounces of clear shampoo per 1,000 square feet. Do that twice at 2 week intervals followed by deep watering each time. The soap will allow the water to penetrate much deeper than you are getting now and will allow the fungi to repopulate. I believe compost is not nearly as valuable as something like alfalfa. If you piled up a bag of all the organic fertilizers, in a year you would have compost. That compost would be no better than any other compost. It would be the depleted remains of the original materials. Your soil test is worthless. Sorry but DIY soil test kits are worthless. From the git-go you are not using dionized purified water for your testing. If you test the soil with tap water at a pH of 8, your soil test will likely show a pH of 8. It's magic! And just because the pH is not perfect, that does not mean you have to do something. Most grasses are tolerant of fluctuations in soil pH. Are you putting in the sprinklers yourself? Because a good installer would use a ditch witch instead of a trenching shovel. Know this: ALL THE DIRT that comes out of the trench MUST GO BACK on top of the trench. If you spread it all out to make it level, in 3 years you will have a trench following the lines of the irrigation trenches. Pile it back up and it will all settle back in. This is especially true in Pasadena, CA. (not really but I'm trying to make a point). Before you decide on which lawn type, you might take a visit to two nearby places: Descanso Gardens and the Huntington Library. Let your son crawl around on the various grasses they have on display there. And if the St Aug is tearing up your son's knees, I believe it is being mowed far too low. It should be 4 inches high after mowing. That is typically a mower's highest setting. Don't mix rye with anything and definitely NOT KBG. You can mix varieties of KBG seed or mix in some Marathon, but don't mix in rye.

Well, I guess I just tend to go against the grain. My dad put up a new lawn a couple years earlier and went with a fescue blend and had great results relative to a reference subject neighbor who makes the mistake with his KBG of watering ALL THE TIME or else it literally starts wilting the very day he does not water. Luckily for him he is on well water. A local sod farm advertises it on the radio and they have a website that goes over a few things about the RTF variety that I decided to take a chance on. Since July my lawn is looking vastly improved coinciding with a more timely precipitation pattern and my abandonment of chemical fertilizers. I personally think anything you plant is going to do better in an organically mature soil but I would go with the same variety I have now if I were to do it again. I look at the deep green color, shade tolerance, deep root system, less water requirement, marginal rhizomatous activity (enough to keep me from overseeding, hopefully ever) and that is what draws me to it. Also, the blades are fine for a fescue but thicker than most bluegrass I've seen but I think that helps shade itself a little bit better. Plus fescues often have symbiont relations with endophyte organisms that can protect it from disease. Sometimes I wonder if the people that have no success with the RTF are habitually cutting it down too short which I believe weakens the fescue moreso than it would the KBG, even though I would obviously recommend leaving either variety at a high mower setting. So there's my pitch.