Thanks for the advice everyone. We tend to have wet Springs around here so chances are good that the weeds will get what they are wishing for. :) Therefore I think a pre-emergent is a good idea, at least for the first year as CDUB suggested. The other factor is the fact that I have no idea what the turf will look like once all the this snow melts. It might be thinned out or in other worrying shape. I left it at 3" for the Winter and I applied Urea in late November after top growth stopped so hopefully it should get going well once the weather starts warming up. Should I cut it short for the first cut of the year? I read somewhere that it's a good idea to cut off all the dead top growth from the Winter. What do you recommend for pre-emergent? Thanks. Regards, Robert

If I wanted to do the entire renovation in the spring (I can get away with that because it's sod), how would I kill off the entire yard in March when it is still pretty much dormant? I heard glyphosate won't really work well when everything is dormant. I guess I could wait until the end of March, early April but that is cutting it close. I'll want a months time to do two applications and leave time between the kill off and sodding.

That is too bad. We warn and warn and warn against spring seeding but you know who gets all the attention? The magazines and TV that put on a full court press to get your seeding done in the spring. What kills me is the availability of bermuda grass seed in March in my area. Bermuda is a HOT season grass and seed will not sprout for months after it goes on sale. Now that it is hot as blazes here, they have put the fescue blends on the shelf. In San Antonio??? Puh LEEZE! Yes you only thought you had done all your research. It always pains me to find out I overlooked something really basic that everyone else seems to know. Like, How did I miss THAT? Grass1950 got it right with the one step forward and two steps back. It is heartening to see you have a positive attitude toward a second reno in the same year. I would say your lawn as is has a shot at recovery but it will not be until this time next year that you see the results. If you reno again in August, you can have it looking pretty good by October. KBG is one of those ground covers with the following characteristics: The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps. Have patience and you will be rewarded. 1. Find the seed you want. Check the NTEP trials for your state and area to see what they like. Lean toward those but don't necessarily commit yet. Look at previous years trials for other varieties. Some are more readily available and perhaps the newer ones offer only marginal improvements. With seed you usually get what you pay for. You should pay more for seed with 0.00% Weed Seed and 0.00% Other Crop. There are a few pesky grasses with seeds the size of dust that can create the wrong lawn if you get them in your seed. Look online for seed suppliers and ask here about actual human's experiences with the vendor. Please don't look at anything that has rye seed in it. The reason takes a lot of words but suffice it to say it sprouts quickly and gives you false hopes as to your new seed. 2. If all you have is annual weeds, then don't respray the RoundUp. Just rent the power rake and set the blades to shred right at ground level. Some places the blades will not hit the ground. Don't panic. Shred the existing weeds and grass and blow or rake it all up. Then reevaluate your surface. You will still have some low spots and high spots. Use your judgement to lower the blades another 1/4 inch to dig up and shred the rest of the plants in the low spots. With this run you will also shred the surface of the high spots loosening the soil. Try to remember where the high spots were and hit them a little harder to loosen more soil. Then use a carpet or something big and relatively heavy to drag around and move the loose soil into the holes. The carpet will have enough horizontal structure to not fall into the holes itself and remove the soil but it will pull loose soil in. Drag that carpet every which way until you are happy with the way it looks. Then water it to settle the dust. I should say that you will suffer the ill effects of rototilling for 3 more years as your soil settles. Consider this a training session for the ultimate leveling you might do in 2015 or so. The reason you had bumpy soil in the first place was because someone rototilled. It is possible to have putting green perfection even at home. Check the archives here to find more on leveling the lawn. 3. Scatter the seed. Roll the seed down with a water fillable roller (rented). The purpose is to get good contact between the seed and soil. It is the soil against the seed that keeps the seed from drying out. Covering the seed with top dressing is too random. You can have large areas that don't take because the covering was too thick. Just roll it. KBG takes a looonnnnggg 3 weeks to come in to the 80% mark. Keep the moisture on as you did before for the entire time. Don't be tempted by early sprouts to back off on watering yet. At 3 weeks you should be approaching 80% germination which is about all the seed producers guarantee. 4. Once the seed is up, you can start thinking about adjusting your mowing height (3 to 3.5 inches for KBG). You can start thinking about backing off on the frequency of watering. Normal for the fall is to apply a full inch once a month. Don't apply 1/4 inch per week or 1/30 inch per day. Apply it all in one day. The reason for that is, remember how you water for new seed (every day), that is what weed seeds are looking for. Once again I need to warn you that the annual weeds you saw in August were summer annuals. There are also winter/spring annuals that you will not see. Those plants will sprout along with your grass but will not show their heads until spring. For the most part we lovingly call those wild flowers but they are traditional weeds. They are annuals and will die in late spring. Again, don't panic. Once your grass is in in the fall I believe you can apply a preemergent herbicide (not corn gluten meal) to minimize the spring weeds. You can also fertilize with organics and even chemical ferts in the fall. Tiemco will be along with more specific help on that. 5. What you want to do in the fall is get your new seeds up and mowed a few times. This will prepare the roots for the summer heat next year. You want to get it as dense as possible for 1-year grass. That density will protect your lawn from weeds of all kinds next season. 6. Early next spring you will be tempted by all manner of advertising to apply fertilizer early. Please resist. KBG will put on enough growth in the early spring that pumping it up with fertilizer is not needed. Wait until after the early flush of new growth to apply the first app. Think in terms of Memorial Day for now. You sound like someone who is going to take this lawn pretty seriously. If so you should go ahead and get a soil test at Logan Labs in Ohio. For $20 they give a much better test than any university or county extension service. Post your test results here and you will get help as to what to add and where to find the additives.

Thank you for the pictures. You can't imagine how much better that is than our collective imaginations. You are not overthinking this. You are thinking it through properly. It's just a lot to put down all at once, but I thank you for going to the trouble and not scattering it all over the place. Your soil is poor and thin not because of anything that has been done to it, but because you have not been using organic fertilizer at least once a year. There is a FAQ on organic lawn care in the GW Organic Gardening Forum. Check that out for a basic primer on the new approach to inexpensive organic lawn care. If you want to improve your soil very quickly, go straight organic and go often. This year rather than using corn (too expensive) I have been using alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow). When I wrote the Organic Lawn Care FAQ, corn was selling for $3 per bag. This year is was $15-20 per bag while alfalfa was "only" $12 per bag. Alfalfa is a better fertilizer than corn anyway, so it's a much better deal. I've been on these forums for 10 years. There are two approaches to getting rid of creeping charlie that work. One is to dig up the top six inches of every square inch of the yard and pull out all the roots. Start in one corner and go as far as you can. When you come back, start AGAIN in the SAME CORNER and repeat because you will have missed some. At least the second time it goes much faster. Continue doing and redoing the area until you have nothing but soil. Or the other approach that works is to use non-organic chemicals. I will not address that approach in this forum because this is an organic forum and because the people here are not well versed in the use of the chemicals. If you decide to use something like RoundUp, check into a lawn forum where the members know how to use it. The same goes for bermuda. You can get rid of them, though. Sand is not a problem in the soil. In fact I prefer sand to anything else when I'm leveling or filling in low areas. If that was your jar test I just commented on, you have mostly sand anyway. Good news there is that sand does not compact like other soils do. Bad news is that sand does not develop a structure like other soils do. Tree work will not involve equipment. You will get a crew of men who climb trees like monkeys and drag stuff to the front where the equipment is. Drainage needs to be addressed. You'll need an on site landscaper to fix that for you. For your small lot he might use a tractor with a tool called a box blade or he might just use a group of labor guys. The tractor would be done in 10 minutes. Dog urine is only a problem when the basic soil is not fertilized. If you had adequate fertilizer down, dog urine becomes instant fertilizer. When you don't have the biology right, then that instant fertilizer burns the roots. If you are interested in an alternative turf grass, look into the wheatgrasses that might do well in your area. They are normally considered a prairie grass, but when you sow the seed like a lawn and mow it a few times, it looks like one of the best lawns you'll find. Here is a picture of a wheatgrass lawn in Utah. He's in a high desert area and waters his lawn beginning in late May or June. Mowing is monthly. His is a mix of wheatgrasses, blue grama, and strawberry clover. When seeding you might try doing half the yard at a time. At the bottom of your steps you need a landing. It can be a easy as several inches of shredded tree mulch or it could be more formal like a wooden landing or even stone.