That explanation does not make sense. Something is drastically wrong with his mower. A wheel is broken, flat tires, the blade is coming off, or something. Maybe the adjusters are broken. There is no way adding even a thousand pounds on top of the deck would affect the mowing height by several inches. There is also no way he didn't drive the first 3 feet into your lawn and realize he was ruining it. I'm not interested in blame but there is really only one place to point the finger. If he is a professional, fire him. If he is a friend, make sure he has his mower checked over before coming back. You won't need his services for at least a month anyway so he has plenty of time.

Turning to your grass, you are essentially reestablishing your turf from the scalped condition. If you have any Kentucky bluegrass, then you have a prayer of recovering this season. If you only had fescues, some and maybe a lot will recover. If not, though, then you will have to reseed or resod. At this time of year sod is a much MUCH better choice if you can get it.

Milorganite will not speed things up. If you are on a chemical program anyway, maybe someone here can help you with a fertilizer that will give you a growth spurt. Organic fertilizers very rarely give a growth spurt. They only affect soil microbe health, and healthy microbes produce growth regulators, not growth spurters (?).

Water! Yes!! Unfortunately the water will germinate weed seeds but you need coverage. You can deal with weeds later after the grass comes back. I would water daily for a few days and see how it's going. If you see some promising regrowth, then back off again on the water to every other day and keep watching as you back off to weekly watering.

Grass is fairly resilient. Cutting it that much will stress it, but probably not kill it. Surprisingly, even some of the spots that have dirt showing may survive, as long as the roots are in good shape and at least part of the crown remained.

Do you know what kind of grass it is? If it's KBG, the spots that do die will likely fill back in from surrounding areas.

For now, I think your best approach is to give it some time. And if you keep this guy for mowing, make him raise the deck. I don't care whether the grass was wet or not, there's no way he should have scalped thee lawn.

B. S. (That stands for, among other things, Not Very Likely).

He knew, part way through, that he'd screwed up.

1. Fire his butt. You would really prefer to have a stupid 17 year old on that lawn.

2. Put the Milorganite down. It won't hurt, and could help.
3. Even though these things are well documented, and it is undoubtedly true that when a person scalps their lawn their air pollution index goes up, their city (or incorporated township) loses population, and cable TV rates go up, and rust appears on their vehicle where none has been observed before, there's still only one thing to do: you wait. Fact is, it will be fine. You will have a bad two weeks (check that vehicle often, and your local cable junk mail), but the fact is, with family support, you can get through this. Let us know, every Saturday for the next three Saturdays (I have you on my calendar) how it looks.

I have done this, scalped. No, it's not fun. No, it isn't fun waiting. We, all of us, are with you. Do, really, let us know.

Good luck with it.

Potting girl....I believe I'd look for a combo product that has a pre-emergent weed control in it & also contains a starter fertilizer. I think these products are typically referred to as "weed & feeds" but you need to be sure & check that the pre-emerg part is for broad leaf weed control, not just crabgrass & that the starter fertilizer has a very high first # listed on the bag(Potasium I think it is). Anyway, that combination applied liberally should give the scalped grass a chance to grow at the top (if any is left) & hopefully minimize the infestation of weeds brought on by the now bare spots & frequent watering. I'd hit those scalped areas pretty heavy with the stuff. You can certainly do it by hand or use a rotary spreader if you have one. Definitely water it more often & a little more heavily than normal. Hopefully it will get it back to looking good in a few weeks time....Good luck

All is most definitely not lost...it's May, not July. If the fool had done this in July the losses would be severe.

We're in the same zone (I'm on the other side of the state, but close enough). The next week features good, cool weather with lots of rain coming tonight and tomorrow, and spotty rain throughout the week. That's wonderful. If we don't get rain for a day or two, water it enough to dampen the entire root zone (it shouldn't take that much in this weather).

Milorganite, sure. It does contain 0.5% of water soluble nitrogen, so that will help. It's hard to overdo with that, so I'd go 20 lbs per thousand square feet right now. And I do mean "right now." In two weeks, do it again.

If you'd rather use a synthetic, sure. Adjust the amount to give the grass no more than 1 lb of actual nitrogen per thousand square feet, and consider it again in a month.

If the fool in question actually dug into the soil the crowns are destroyed, the roots may be damaged, and may or may not regrow (may not being more likely). However, grass can recover from an amazing amount of damage fairly quickly.

Like the others said above, if you hired this fellow fire him and find somebody else. Even in deep dusk, that kind of damage should be obvious by your second pass. If it's light enough to mow, it's light enough to see that.

This story reminds me of a gal on the shrubs forum said a neighbor was trying to run the gas out of his mower and decided to mow her lawn. Nice gester, but he accidentally mowed down one of her shrubs!

Sad thing is her lawn didn't need cutting to begin with.

Dear All of you nice responders:
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my post. I sincerely appreciate it. It was so nice to hear from so many of you and I do have to say it made me feel a great deal better. I promise to keep you posted. It rained a little last night and before I left for work, I watered a little more. The sun is out now. I am hopeful that in some areas it will come back. In others if it doesn't come back I will try sod. I will also try either milorganite or a weed n feed product before the next rain which I think may be tomorrow. I do feel lucky that it did not happen in July. Thank you, thank you. I will keep you posted. Oh, and I wanted to say that I have no idea what kind of grasses make up my lawn, but it was a beautiful rolling 1/2 acre. Thanks again. Pottingshedgirl