Brian, you have 3...no, four things against you for attaining a good lawn and its a quetion whether you have the will and the way to correct it. First off, the trees. Trees are notoriously thirsty--they drink what moisture in the ground and leave little for grass above. Since most trees' roots are within 18" of the surface of the soil, you can see that not much moisture can escape them. So we must invent a way to help the ground retain moisture. Two, clay soil. It can grow many plants successfully---but I don't think a good lawn can be obtained unless we try to change what a clay soil does---retains too much water in the wrong places. Three, a hillside. Since water retention is going to be a problem the grass stands little chance of keeping what moisture is given by you---or by the Man Upstairs. Four, Sunlight. Some good, some bad, some very bad. One at a time: Trees, the grass below has to be one that will stand up to how the tree allows sunlight to come through. There are different grasses for sun and shade. Sometimes they are a mix....but you can buy for special places. Clay soil: To help it retain moisture, you must try to get into it some organic matter. Compost, hay, straw, newspaper, old dry grass clippings ..and many other amendments including peat moss. Compost is the one leading soil amendment which can help your grass grow. Organic material aids the soil into water retention. It will soak up water and help it retain water over the wider area. It will help break up the clay soil. Getting it into the soil might be a problem. If the ground is not thought to be any good, then rototil the organics into it. Go down at least 6 - 12 inches and incorporate the material as you turn it over. At the same time look to improving its drainage. You can read for yourself about "compost". Hillside: Unless you reduce the grade, you will always have loss of moisture through run-off unless you improve the soil ability to hold onto water. Sunlight: Might the trees be pruned in such a way to allow more sun penetration. Shade is always going to be the problem. Unless you can improve sunlight in shady areas, you will forever have a problem keeping the grass. Feeding the grass will help it grow and retain its greeness. High nitrogen lawn fertilizer, given in spring and during a schedule through the season is called for. If you can see yourself purchasing some compost, it can be given to your lawn over the surface twice a year...spring and fall. Fall is the best time to overseed--it has less competition and the cooler weather prompts the grass to grow. For any area you can figure out how much topsoil or compost you need to cover a particular area. Multipy the width of the area, times the length of the area in feet...giving you square feet. Multipy that times the depth in inches....and divide that figure by 1000 and multiply by 3. That gives you exactly the number of cubic yards needed to cover the area. For that, do not add ontop of the grass any more than 2" at any one time. More will suffocate the grass. Sod. Sod cannot be grown ontop of grass that is presently there. Now, if this is all too much to think about, then consider putting down some Dutch White Clover which will take over a lawn and needs no fertilizer--it takes the free nitrogen right out of the air. It stands up dog urine....but... wait....you have shade. Clover will not grow in shade. So that's out. I guess its grass or nothing.

Asking a bunch of lawn wackos whether you should hire somebody to take care of your lawn is probably not going to get a lot of endorsements for the lawn service. I used a lawn service for the first year I owned my house and my thinking was much along the same lines as yours. I'd get a professional service to get rid of the weeds and get my grass healthy and after that, I'd be able to do it on my own. I think they said that they used a specific set of chemicals that they sprayed that was tailored to my lawn and its needs, but the truck that they brought around had a big tank on it and they used the same tank on every lawn. When they would come by, they'd leave a notice on the door with recommendations for how often to cut, water, etc based on the conditions they noted in my lawn. But it was the same every time, regardless of the temperature, rainfall, etc. To top it off, the weed situation was no better than before and may have even gotten worse. I also wasn't really comfortable with the little flags they'd put out telling me to keep children and pets off the lawn for a minimum of X days because of the treatments. So I took matters into my own hands. I read things from the extension offices and started doing things that are pretty close to what gets recommended around here. Things started improving. Then I found various lawncare forums and things got even better. One humorous (or maddening?) thing happened a few years after I stopped using the lawn care service. A sprinkler head broke and a section of the lawn went dormant because it wasn't getting any water (the only water lawns get here is from sprinklers). One of the lawncare services pulled up and told me that I had a serious grub problem and needed to treat it right away. They went out to the area that was dormant and started pulling up sections of grass and telling me that it was due to grubs. I knew it was because of lack of water and suggested that as the cause, and they started launching into an explanation of why they knew that wasn't it. I then turned on the sprinkler in that section and showed them that it wasn't working, but they still tried to tell me it was grubs. Anyway, the main things you want to do are the following: Water deeply and infrequently. Apply an inch of water a week, but only water once a week if you can (in the desert, I often have to water twice a week, or once every 5 days, anyway). Adjust the amount (or the frequency) you water for any rainfall. This has a couple of benefits. First, it promotes deep roots, so the grass can better deal with periods of drought. I call grass a lazy plant, because it will only put down roots as deeply as it needs to for the water it gets. If the top inch of soil is always wet, the grass will have roots that are only an inch deep. Second, letting the ground dry between waterings will discourage weed seeds from germinating, because they need moisture to germinate. Mulch mow and mow at the highest setting of your mower and never cut more than 1/3 of the blade at one time. Mulch mowing returns water and nutrients to the soil and improves the health of the soil. It doesn't contribute to thatch and can actually contribute to getting rid of it. Mowing at the highest setting helps to make the grass stronger because it gives more surface area for photosynthesis. It also helps shade the surface so the roots are better able to deal with heat and drought. Also, it helps keep weeds from thriving because the weeds need sunlight. Fertilize once in the spring and twice in the fall. If you're using weed killers, don't use the weed and feed products (another reason I don't like the services--the one size fits all means they fertilize and kill weeds at the same time). Instead, spot spray weeds that you see sprout up. As for the lime, did they do a soil test? If not, there's no way to know whether lime is needed. Some areas tend to have low pH soils, but you don't know what the prior owner did. The prior owner may have applied lime regularly and heavily and raised the pH too high. If so, I wouldn't do anything to lower the pH because that will happen anyway, but you need to know if it needs lime before adding it. I guess my comment on the grubs is similar. Do you have grubs? If not, the grub treatment makes a lot more sense for the lawn service than it does for you.

Good points Paul. Outsourcing production makes sense. I haven't really tried to quantify it but my gut tells me to be skeptical about synthetic companies' organic products. My gut tends to be right a lot of the time so I'm starting out with other organic sources. My correspondence with Shel at Organic Lawns for America has been very positive. From speaking with another user I found it seems like they select what they consider the best products and repackage them and provide the convenience of mail order. I know to some this may seem lazy to some but the easier my lawn is to maintain the happier I am :) I got some soil conditioner which seems to be mostly calcium derived from limestone and an assortment of bacteria and fungi that appear to be soil inoculants as well as some other things that seem to help bring nutrients back into the soil. Going to do some more searching on the ingredients. I saw the abstract of one study on one of the bacteria and it increases the size of tomatoes. The Ca in it should help to. Curious to see how the other ingredients play in other plantings. No "fertilizer" in this treatment but with the grasscycling, liming and this treatment I'm hoping to see some better color in the lawn in a couple of weeks.

This upcoming year, I am probably going to overdo it again based on my excitement and desire to try different things. However, here is my tentative plan: March: I am going to get soil tests in two places: 1) where my grass is going great 2) the two spots where the grass is shaky April 1: I am going with a chemical preemergent. I just feel like I have to break the weed cycle for a year to give the grass a chance to fill in. I will also drop some corn meal gluten at that time. I will spray my first round of compost tea. May 1: I am going to go with some corn meal, not corn meal gluten, since I have had some fungus problems. I will continue with a light spray of compost tea. I am obsessed with getting the right bacteria/fungi situation going on my lawn - hence the compost tea and corn meal. June 1: Once again, I am going with a light sprinkling of corn meal as well as some compost tea. August 15: Alfalfa September 1: Compost, Overseed, Milorganite. October 1: Milorganite or soy bean meal, along with some compost tea. November 15: Cockadoodledoodoo chicken fertilizer. As you can see, I am going with a few different things because not only do I find this all fun, but also I am not sure what will - or won't - work. Here are my reasons: 1) corn meal gluten: They say it takes a couple years before it truly works. So, while I am working it into the soil, I am going to give it one last shot of synthetic preemergent. 2) corn meal: I have a hunch that I have some fungus issues. 3) Alfalfa: I am doing this for the phosphorus that will be needed two weeks later for the overseeding. 4) Milorganite: I like Milorganite. I have liked the results thus far. 5) Cockadoodledoodoo: My uncle uses it, and his house is the first in his neighborhood to green up. Also, the organic company that services my neighborhood uses something like it exclusively (all applications), and their lawns are always as green as the chemically treated ones.