Can't help you with green into winter. With bermuda and St Augustine it is a matter of continued watering and temperatures. If you want the grass to go dormant soon, withhold water as the temps fall. If you want it to continue green all year, then continue weekly watering. To some extent this works for Kentucky bluegrass with ideal soil circumstances. But buffalo does not need even weekly water in the summer, so there's a lot I need to learn about it. The folks at Turffalo know about it. They sell a fast spreading variety of buffalo they call Tech Turf. They co-developed it with Texas Tech, hence the name. Here is a picture showing how it is trying to spread over the sidewalk. I used to live in the Lubbock area and took the picture. That lawn belonged to a frat house and it was the week after school got out for the summer. It had likely been 3 weeks since it was mowed. It seemed to be a very successful lawn - much more dense than any seeded variety of buffalo would be. The only problem was the area behind a tree. The tree was not all that dense, but the grass on the north side was thinning. That would be the same issue for any buffalo grass as well as the grasses I mentioned above.

Let me get you started with the very basics of lawn care. Some of these may seem counter intuitive, but they are the general consensus of 12 years of Internet commentary on many different lawn care forums from amateur to professional. Basics of Lawn Care After reading numerous books and magazines on lawn care, caring for lawns at seven houses in my life, and reading numerous forums where real people write in to discuss their successes and failures, I have decided to side with the real people and dispense with the book and magazine authors. I don't know what star their planet rotates around but it's not mine. With that in mind, here is the collected wisdom of the Internet savvy homeowners and lawn care professionals summarized in a few words. If you follow the advice here you will have conquered at least 50% of all lawn problems. Once you have these three elements mastered, then you can worry about weeds (if you have any), dog spots, and striping your lawn. But if you are not doing these three things, they will be the first three things suggested for you to correct. Watering Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an inch in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. Do not spread this out and water for 10 minutes every day. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. If that does not work, then you might have to water more than once per week during the summer's hottest period. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. You will have to learn to judge when to water your own lawn. If you live in El Paso your watering will be different than if you live in Vermont. Adjust your watering to your type of grass, temperature, humidity, wind, and soil type. It is worth noting that this technique is used successfully by professionals in Phoenix, so...just sayin.' The other factors make a difference. If you normally water 1 inch per week and you get 1/2 inch of rain, then adjust and water only 1/2 inch that week. Mowing Every week mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. However, bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses will become the most dense when they are mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. In fact there are special mowers that can mow these grasses down to 1/16 inch. Dense grass shades out weeds, keeps the soil cooler, and uses less water than thin grass. Tall grass can feed the deep roots you developed in #1 above. Tall grass does not grow faster than short grass nor does it look shaggy sooner. Once all your grass is at the same height, tall grass just looks plush. Fertilizing Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 5 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above. Follow the directions on the bag and do not overdo it. Too much is better than too little*. At this point you do not have to worry about weed and feed products - remember at this point you are just trying to grow grass, not perfect it. Besides once you are doing these three things correctly, your weed problems should go away without herbicide. * This used to read, "Too little is better than too much." Recent test results show that you cannot get too much organic fertilizer unless you bury the grass in it. So that covers what to do once you actually have a lawn. When you say you have really hot summers, are you talking about heat or humidity? Do you have temps in the 100s more than once a year like in Phoenix? Arkansas is not exactly my stomping grounds but I'd be surprised if a warm season grass would work well there. With that in mind the grasses that would do best would be Kentucky bluegrass and or fescues. Is shade a consideration on your lot? If you have areas with less than 6 hours of direct summer sunlight, then KBG will not work for you. Seeding those grasses is most successful when done in the early fall (late August for you). You might want to nurse your weed patch through the summer until fall and do it all right just one time. Or you might seed in early spring hoping to beat the crabgrass seed. The problems with spring seeding is the crabgrass seed is ready to sprout as well as the young grass normally has trouble developing tough roots to withstand the summer heat. The result is often a full crabgrass lawn by July. Whether it works like that or not, you can recover in the early fall with a blast of RoundUp and new seed. If you buy seed for a spring seeding, you can just use cheap seed. If you buy it for fall you might want to spend a little more to get higher quality seed. You do get what you pay for with seed. Write back with your comments based on what I've started with and we can help you better.

Kill everything with roundup and re-seed mid-August. Roundup is safe to apply up to a day before seeding, just make sure you don't get the extended control one, it has pre-emergent in it. Seed needs to be kept moist at all times to get good germination, which means watering 3-4 times a day for 5-10 minutes until germination. With KBG it can take up to 3 weeks. Then you can start cutting back on frequency and increasing quantity a little at a time. I would highly suggest you use either a starter fertilizer with mesotrione(Scotts) or spray Tenacity at seeding time. Apply pre-emergent every spring going forward, and if you can even in the fall to keep winter weeds under control.

Well we had downpours yesterday afternoon and I don't know if the grass seed the landscapers put down will have a chance to germinate or washed away. Please see the attached photos. As you can see we have a grading problem with the front yard as well as puddling in the backyard. The landscaper said underground piping needs to be run from the gutter downspouts to elivate the puddling in the front yard. We are still waiting for them to be installed. Any thoughts or recommendations? Front yard. Back yard below.