Sod is wonderful. The main disadvantage to seeding is that the seed must be kept moist while it's germinating, which means briefly watering several times a day for a couple of weeks or more. With sod, you don't have to worry about the race between new grass and weeds, as the grass is already established. Sod is more expensive than seed but if you have a small yard, it would be the less stressful way to go. You'd have an instant lawn. You would need to stay off a newly seeded lawn for weeks. Your choices of cultivars will be more limited in sod. When selecting the cultivar, make sure it's brown patch resistant. Tall fescue is generally suspectible to brown patch in hot, humid weather and Virginia has plenty of that. After grass is established, always water in the morning, not the afternoon or evening, so grass can dry off before night. When you water, do an inch at a time (measure using a tuna fish can in the yard) and let the ground dry out between waterings. Deep infrequent watering is the way to go after grass is established. You could get some Kentucky bluegrass in with the mixture of fescue; the advantage is that bluegrass spreads and fills in whereas with all fescue you generally need to overseed each fall to fill in problem spots. It's good to get a mix of cultivars so that if disease gets one kind, the others may not be affected. Fine fescues are recommended for shady lawns. I think you should have enough sun for tall fescue and KBG. Here are the VA Tech recommendations: http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/CSES/CSES-17/CSES-17.html

Thank you both -- this is great information!! Yes, the tiny landscaper is a bit inexperienced. But I bet she'll enjoy helping us drag around a chain link fence. I wouldn't have thought of doing it without a machine, but that sounds much more efficient than the hand rake alone. We'll most certainly try it. Grass1950, I hadn't really given topsoil much thought. We don't want the lawn level to be any higher anyway, even after it settles, so would compost right before seeding be a good idea (banking on the idea that it would disappear soon)? Or would you stick with fertilizer? We do want to stay mainly organic (again, see the tiny lanscaper). There are wheel marks all over the place, yes. The contractor came back and filled in one huge set that was about 4" deep (where he parked the truck full of gravel, before taking the gravel out with a wheelbarrow) but we'll leave the rest to figure itself out. The French drain went in, along with a couple of buried and redirected gutter downspouts, at the recommendation of our home inspector and 2 contractors. (OK, right, the home inspector technically doesn't recommend work, but he pointedly recommended that we get someone who does French drains in to look at it and make a recommendation.) Our neighborhood is a vast gentle hill, perched atop bedrock with plenty of rain. The yard was really squishy and there was persistent water in the crawl space. It does seem that French drains are overprescribed, but this problem was about groundwater and not surface water, so I hope adding it along the back of the yard (nowhere near the house) with a spout at the base of the hill, along with diverting the gutter pipes away from the house, redoing the crawl space vapor barrier, and putting in a better sump pump will dry out the soil and keep the foundation dryer than it was. Hope that's not TOO too much detail :) Honestly, though, if the drain was a mistake -- well, I'm not ready to learn from that mistake yet. Give it a year to settle in and then I'll be delighted to learn about the parts we messed up. Again, your ideas are super helpful. I will absolutely keep scouring the forum as we go about raking and seeding and watering our turf type tall fescue!

"Now my lawn doesn't look that bad but because of the different grass types the growth of each type is all over the place making my lawn uneven." Fernalfer, that's exactly the reason you want start over. There are often other reasons, but yours is one prime example. It diminishes turf quality (appearance) and often requires mowing more often to maintain uniformity. Third week of August is too late. You want to allow 2 or 3 weeks for additional spraying. 1st week - spray, 2nd week - spray again. There might have to be a third week for a third application. That "R" word stuff is the only herbicide you can use and seeds right afterward. Others will not allow seeding for several weeks following application. If you don't want to use herbicide at all, there are a couple more options. Vinegar/water solution acts as an organic non-selective herbicide like that "R" word stuff. It also will require several applications for a complete kill. You can rent a sod cutter. It's more work and more expensive but sure is faster rather than repeated herbicide applications and waiting 2-3 weeks before seeding can take place. You can try smothering the grass by covering it with black (or dark colored) plastic to solarize and deny sunlight. This will also take several weeks and you'd have to lay the plastic very soon, but it's cheaper than a sod cutter. Yep, you want to take care and do everything right as best you can. Cutting cost doesn't factor into the equation unfortunately. I, at least, cannot suggest short cuts, as fault for anything less than success could easily be directed at me. Besides that, it's not in your best interest. Peat moss (Canadian Sphagnum) is my personal favorite growing medium. However, it is a lot more expensive than compost, which is also excellent and a great soil amendment. Please forgive if I don't enumerate all the steps and methods right at the moment. I'll post a new thread on the subject tomorrow and others will chime in with their advice also, so you'll get a complete rundown of your options. In the meanwhile, there are several threads already on the first 2 or 3 pages of the board that are extremely helpful. I am interpreting "50-60 sunlight" to mean your grass around the trees does receive at least 4-6 hours of sunlight, right? If I'm right, my suggestion to Vkolte01 above will work fine for you also. If I'm wrong, please inform. Please let us know if we can help with anything else.

You cannot blame your neighbor for your crabgrass. Crabgrass seed is everywhere, but it only germinates when the environment is right. It was your management that allowed the crabgrass to get started. Every now and then we will get a note here thanking us for the watering and mowing advice which put a dead stop to the neighbor's encroaching crabgrass. If you are doing it right, crabgrass will grow right up to the edge of your lawn and stop. It will stop because your soil is too dry for seed to germinate and because your grass is too dense for the crabgrass to get any light. First of all you need a dense canopy of grass. If you have fescue turf, you should overseed every fall until it is as dense as necessary to keep the crabgrass out. If the Pennington bag has Kentucky bluegrass in it, then the turf can become dense without annual overseeding. Secondly, only seed northern grasses in the fall. Why? Because crabgrass seed only germinates in the spring. If you seed grass in the spring, you will germinate all the crabgrass seed in the process. Also if you seed grass in the spring the summer heat will kill it. Third, do not mow at your mower's lowest setting. If your grass is dense you can mow at the 3-inch level. If it is less dense, then you might raise it up to the mower's highest setting until the grass becomes more dense. That might take years of overseeding if you have only fescue and no Kentucky bluegrass. Fourth, don't fertilize in the early spring. Wait until after the fast flush of spring growth is over. Memorial Day is a good day to shoot for. Once your lawn is established, the watering mantra is deep and infrequent. Deep means one inch all at one time. Infrequent means monthly watering in the cool months and gradually increasing the frequency to weekly in the hottest heat of summer. By allowing the soil surface to dry out completely between watering, the weed seeds cannot germinate. They need to have continual watering to do that. You might have neighbors who water daily for a few minutes. That is exactly wrong for too many reasons to go in to. After you have a few months of deep and infrequent going on, then you can adjust the amount you put down for your situation. Variables include shade, sun, clouds, wind, humidity, soil type and condition, grass type, mowing height, and probably some that don't come to mind right now. You need to measure the output of your sprinklers using a cat food or tuna can. Time how long it takes to fill a few of those cans placed around the yard. My system takes 8 full hour to fill a can but my neighbor's takes only 20 minutes. Every system is different. Another example of different is my house in San Antonio is under a dense canopy of oak trees. With my grass, mowing height, and soil, I can normally water for 3 hours per week in the summer (3/8 inch) but sometimes I have to go to 5 hours. During our driest years I will have to water for 7 hours per week to keep the grass from wilting before the week is up.