Quick question...Do any of you have any experience with getting rid of ground ivy?? Regrettably. It seems to require a flamethrower, Napalm, or Agent Orange, and none of those are completely reliable. Use Round Up, but expect that you'll likely have to hit it twice, a week apart, and even then you may get a little back. If you do, take care of it immediately or it spreads like a wildfire. If you keep tearing away the greenery or keep hitting it with Round Up, eventually it gets the idea and dies. It almost seems like the stuff can regenerate from the tiniest remaining root.

lou_midlothian_tx , Your yard looks nice. Did you establish it 3 years ago from solid sod or sprig it? How much soil prep was done? I have trouble believing that a St. Augustine yard can be maintained long term only with your "organic" fertilizer. A three year old sodded yard can be nice on almost nothing. When I say long term I mean let's see the yard after 10 to 25 years. I'd be willing to wager that it would be 25% St.Augustine and 75% other grass and weeds of many varieties. I'd also like to see a St. Augustine yard that was started from sprigs among all the other weeds and grasses with nothing but your "organic program". Where I come from it's virtually impossible to compete with weeds and other grasses without using some herbicides. Even with these herbicides the weeds sometimes get ahead of the curve. I'm no knocking what you say. I just disagree that it's so clear cut as what you imply about organics. I had a St. Augustine yard for 40 years. At times it looked as good as your picture but at other times weeds seemed to come from Mars and invade with a vengance.

"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." I think that came out wrong. I was not hinting at anything you said. I was setting up for what I was about to say. My hammer is corn meal, which in the organic world is recognized as a fungal disease preventer and cure. The nail is your yellow grass. When I see the yellow grass, I assume it is a fungal problem. I can see where that could easily be misinterpreted. Sorry. YES, you have to wait until late summer to reseed. Why? Well you don't have to but if you want good results, wait. Seeding now will give you a yard full of crabgrass right away and later on, any grass that did germinate will die from the heat allowing the crabgrass to fully take over. If you want to fix that for the future, you could seed in some Kentucky bluegrass in the late summer. It will spread to fill in weak spots where fescues do not spread.

Yeah, I can already hear the excuse coming because if I didn't know what happened, I would have pronounced it dormant. due to the location and visual from a distance. Unfortunately, proving that will be almost impossible. Most herbicides can and will burn the lawn if the temperature is above 80-85 when applied and in sunlight (and blanket spraying is not recommended at any time unless the problem is also very wide-spread). You know that now...they should have known that, but, as Sherry noted, they had a timeline and probably a boat payment to make. Spot spraying herbicides later in the evening can be OK if you know your lawn is up to it. But that's only true on established lawns, is very herbicide-dependent, and not something I'd do over a wider area. I did it on my own a few days ago in two tiny areas of less than a square foot to remove a piece of nutsedge and a tiny bit of creeping Charlie that had gotten started in a dormant bit, but I was very careful not to overspray and I was using an herbicide that's not particularly known to cause damage even in heat. The good news. Some of that is going to recover because it's top burn. The blade and crown burned, but from the before shot, the grass very clearly has lots and lots of carbohydrates stored in the roots to use to regrow the crown and blade. That does take a lot of energy, and some time, but keep that watered and it should work. The bad news: These idiots managed to hit this at, quite literally, the worst possible moment on the calendar when carbohydrate reserves in the roots are at their lowest point, so some of it is NOT going to recover. I can't see the grass type at this distance (and I'm pretty visually disabled so have trouble with plant ID even up close sometimes unless the color stands out), but hopefully at least some of it is Kentucky bluegrass. Bluegrass spreads when well-fed, so your Labor Day feeding will encourage that to fill right back in. First, fire them. Or restrict their care to mowing it if they do that. Taking over your own care is very easy if they won't do it right. Second, water. Keep the soil damp to moist for a week or so in the burned area to see where you are, if rainfall doesn't do it. Just moist, not wet or soaked or squishy or puddled or... This is the one case where I'm actually going to recommend shorter, frequent watering. Thirty minutes, every other day? If it works to keep it damp, sure. But just for a week--we do not want to set off a fungal infection in that yet and the lawn is stressed. Cut it off dead after that and resume weekly watering unless... Third, seed. If you're really not seeing recovery when you spread the dead stuff and look down, you might want to reseed. Normally I'd give it longer, but you're on the clock here, and Labor Day is really the outside acceptable date for reseeding (you could re-sod that area much later, however--out to about September 20th or so). If it comes down to that, get back to us. There's a whole rigmarole for that. And for general lawn care if you choose to do it yourself--it's pretty easy--or just dictate what they're going to do in the future (which they usually will disobey because...hey--boat payment). Watering: Weekly, deeply, if rainfall isn't doing it, a full inch at a time in most soils, but there are some exceptions, a very few. That's the general rule, although during very hot periods, you can certainly nudge that down to every 5 days or so and I won't argue. (How do I do it personally? I don't water. My bluegrass lawn is allowed to go dormant and return when rainfall returns, but it's fully mature and healthy enough that this is not a problem). Feeding: Four times yearly (three can be acceptable). Memorial Day, Labor Day, October first, and when the last mow of the year is done, give or take some. The first three can be organic or synthetic, the last has to be synthetic. Either one of the last two is optional as long as the other is done, so a very cold year may end in October, or a year where you're not sure may end with delaying October's feeding but doing the shutdown feeding later in October or early November. For Maryland (and up here in PA), both can almost always get done as even December features green grass these last three decades. Weed and Feed: Never. It does neither job well as the appropriate weeding time is not the correct feeding time. Spot spray weeds, if any, as they appear. Try not to apply synthetic feeding to a damp lawn as it can burn the lawn--which is how Weed and Feed is supposed to be applied. Really, once established and healthy, lawns are mostly butt work. You sit and look at it because it mostly does its own thing. Those two weeds are the only two I've sprayed all summer, and they're only there because the lawn is partially dormant and rains just resumed. If I'd ignored them, the sedge would have grown, but the Charlie would get choked out.