UPDATE: On Wednesday afternoon the yard was Harley raked. I then borrowed the neighbors tractor and pulled my heavy drag to smooth everything back out. I then spread the seed. And drug all the area with a piece of wire fabric used for concrete reinforcing. This just barely moved any of the dirt to try and get 1/8" coverage over the seed. Thursday and Friday I started watering a small strip about 50' x 130'. My plan was to wait for a rain to start watering the rest and to see how watering is going to go. I realized watering is going to be quite the problem. I don't have great enough water pressure to run 2 sprinklers and trying to water 1 and 1/4 acres with 1 sprinkler is physically impossible to water it all in one day. The same guy who Harley raked Harley raked is going to come by and use his hydroseed machine to spray the mixture minus seed over the area to help retain moisture. This hopefully will happen this morning since we have a good chance of rain this afternoon and tomorrow. After the rain this weekend I will start watering the whole yard. I'll tinker with the pressure reducing valve on my side of the water meter to see if I can get enough pressure to run two sprinklers. If I can't, Im not sure I'll be successful getting this seed going. Time will tell. Oh yeah, after Harley raking me, my wife, and kids picked up 15 more 5 gallon buckets of rocks plus a wheel barrel full. So many rocks, but I think I've gotten most them on the top inch of soil. I'll update more as everything progresses.

Yes it does look very nice from the street. And I can see where you would get picky about the quality. Before getting too deep into this, where do you live? With metric temperatures I'm assuming somewhere in the hottest parts of Canada or somewhere else in the world.

It's way too late to make the decision for this year, actually! But you can start planning for next year, certainly. Kill out should be in August, with planting the new lawn just as temperatures in the evenings start to drop off their highs and you think, "Summer is ending." Figure September 1 or so, particularly if you decide on bluegrass. Now if you plant rye or fescue you could go September 15 and still be fine...but we're pushing that date already. Grasses do best if given time before winter to drop their roots and grow in. 1) Not necessarily. I used peat moss, personally, about 1/8". It worked great for me. Some people use nothing. You don't need anything if you can guarantee the seed remains damp and can water it three times daily (an automated system can do that easily and Orbit sells one cheap for your hose--but it's not great). A cover is best if you can only water once or twice a day. 2) Half full is the general recommendation. When I did it, I didn't roll. You don't really have to if the soil surface is good, well-prepped, and the seed makes good contact on its own. Certainly if an empty roller is all one could physically handle, then that's what one uses. 3) Elite bluegrass doesn't actually have additional heat tolerance over standard bluegrass, it has excellent drought tolerance--by going dormant. Although, on average, bluegrass will be more heat tolerant than, say, the average ryegrass or fescue, but fades out faster due to that dormancy mechanism. However, unlike the rye or fescue, it doesn't die, it just goes dormant and comes back when rainfall resumes. 3a) For any grass, it's not very good at surviving its first summer and really needs to be coddled through that! It's a big mistake that people make, so plan on babying things through. 4) You don't really need it. Any well-established grass will do the trick and even a pure bluegrass lawn (like my own) has no problems with erosion control if treated well. Treated poorly, even a PR lawn won't control erosion. And in my experience, if you want it to die off, it won't. :-) Plant what you want, and expect it to remain. I'd include some bluegrass in whatever you choose for the self-repair ability, but that's limited unless well-fed.

On the contrary, there's a vast number of things you can do if and when nature is a PITA and a soil test is the first part of it. I spend a ton of time here telling people how to improve their lawns via proper care and feeding to armor them enough to survive what nature can throw. "against him"...Again, it's not a judgement against the guy. I don't know him and don't care about him. It's like a few posters around here who seem to think I have some sort of vendetta against them. Nope, it's just when our paths cross I note that the information given out is extremely poor and I tend to correct it. When that's a habit and they're frequently factually wrong, we're probably going to butt heads pretty often. And doubling down on bad information around me is a superlatively bad idea, because I don't back down either. You can tell most of those because they'll rapidly devolve into a flame war because they have no factual basis for their argument, which I'll also happily allow to happen because it amuses me and gives my acrylic paint layers time to dry. Their blood pressure goes through the roof; I scan their reply just enough to concoct an answer while waving a hand over a layer of paint. I really don't tend to emotionally involve myself with fools, cretins, and idiots. There are too many fun and intelligent people around who know what they're doing. There's a bit of Morph philosophy for you for a Thursday evening. Play with the fools in your life for momentary amusement but don't marry them. ;-) But don't worry, most of them are divorced and bitterly unhappy and lonely anyway. Which brings us to Lisa. Lisa's an in-and-out with a full and happy life who has plenty to do and plenty to be and will be back when she has a moment. Whenever that is. :-)