OK, quick rundown.

I have about an acre (35 45000 sq feet) of lawn at my new Âconstruction home. It was loamed on May 19th and hydroseeded on May 20th with a 33% each Perennial Rye / Bluegrass / Fescue blend. IÂm not sure of the quality of the seed since it was done through the builder, however I have talked to the hydroseeder and he claims it was a high-quality product.

Right off the bat, I had issues keeping the lawn moist. The house is on a well water, and I did not have a sprinkler system installed. I dragged around a hose around the property and did my best to keep the lawn moist (which I donÂt think was very even or accurate. I bought some timers for my sprinklers that attach to the house spigot and set those to run every so often. This worked OK, but I ended up again with issues with pressure in the house. I later found that the builder had never installed a filter in the house and the sediment from the new well was clogging all the sprinklers I had in the yard. At one point, about a week after the hydroseed was applied, I probably had a good three days of 95 degree dry heat with no water on the lawn. I was really nervous, but the lawn did start to come in slowly in the flat areas .

After five weeks, I had a lot of grass on the flat areas, and patchy grass on the hillsides. We had a few rainstorms in between and I noticed I had grass growing (great!) in the runoff areas. I bought some blend seed at a gardening center and slit-seeded the areas that were coming in patch. Also, at five weeks, I put on Scotts starter fertilizer. I thought I had the spreader set right but I only ended up using two bags  they are supposed to cover 10000 square feet each.

I also bought peat moss and used peat moss on the hilly areas where I seeded to dress over the top of the newly seeded areas.

I had a few other patchy areas  a lot of it related to my dog ripping through the yard once and sending the mulch from the hydroseed flying everywhere in the beginning. Also, on a few occasions, I had the sprinkler on timers and left the hose, and then we lost water pressure, and the sprinkler would spin sending water in a 2 radious circle for an hour or more, soaking an area and creaing a few nice rings in my yard whch I am also trying to recuperate.

Property characteristitics  I have a sunny property for the most part. The front yard is roughly 100 by 80Â, and then on the other side of the driveway is another 100 strip that is about 10 wide. The backyard is probably about 100 by 50 plus some more miscellaneous areas. The whole property is on a reasonable slope with a few steeper areas on the property edges. IÂm not sure but I think the lawn is clay  it is pretty hard and the rockbed is not very deep beyond the loam.

I couldÂt take dragging the house around anymore and two weeks ago, I did spring for a sprinkler system. Because of our low pressure, we can only get three heads running at any time. We have 45 heads and 15 zones. There are now nice raised areas in my lawn where the pipe is running everwhere. I hope over time this will compact down more?

Anyways, my big concern is my lawn is just super patchy. Right now the sprinklers are set to run for 20 minutes per zone every other day at 4AM. My lawn is completely sporadic though  I have nice areas (just a few) and then a lot of areas that are browning and not really growing, even though I have been watering them regulary. I put down another bag of the starter fertilizer last week on the brown areas and we have been watering and raining but it still just looks kind of Blah.

I have no idea where to turn or what to do. I know itÂs a new lawn but it really looks like garbage. Something that didnÂt help was we had a torrential washout on my property three weeks ago from the neighbors yard, which is also a new home which hadnÂt been hydroseeded. His entire yard pretty much washed down the hill into and through our property, which I had to spend a whole Saturday shoveling and racking up the mud and rocks that blew into our property past our rock drywell line between the properties.

I also did put lime down once. We also have a TON of weeds, which are particularly prominent on the hillsides.

IÂm just getting very aggravated beause I have spent a LOT of time and research trying to get the lawn to look good and I donÂt think I am making much if any progress.

Pictures: (most of these are a little older. The lawn is actually taking a turn for the worse. These pictures are about 5 weeks after hydroseeding. we are now at around what, 10,11 weeks?)

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