I agree with most of what has been said. However, RoundUp will not work against any of the remaining soybean plants. Unless your previous owner was stuck in the stone age, all the soybean seed sold now is RoundUp-Ready. That means you can spray RU on it all day long and nothing will happen. Does your builder have anything in the contract where he has to prepare the surrounding land for a garden? If so then you don't have to worry about anything. If not, then... The only tool necessary is a box blade on the back of a real tractor. You will definitely be able to find someone with that rig. It will take him about 2 hours to run your entire property unless you have lots of obstacles like trees, buried electrical or piping. BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN TO MAP THE LOCATIONS OF ANYTHING YOUR CONTRACTOR BURIES. And DO NOT let him bury construction material. Almost all of them will do that to some extent or other. Get a trash trailer onsite and make sure everything is cleaned up at the end of the day. Painters will want to clean up their brushes and rollers in the yard. Go ahead and let them do that. It really does not seem to harm the soil or plants. I also agree that 2.5 acres of grass is too much. I have a 1-acre lot out in the country and having half of that in grass is a LOT of grass. Start shopping now for riding mowers. If there is a guy in town who repairs them, ask him for advice on which ones need the fewest repairs. What are the garden restrictions you have to adhere to? Does the entire place need to be landscaped? Can you have a small orchard of citrus or nut trees? A rose garden? A statue garden? A gazebo? I have a long list of garden alternatives to grass but need to see the restrictions. Where are you located? Easton, MD (wild guess) Assuming you are in MD, then I would start researching Kentucky bluegrass as an ultimate turf type. I like it because it is very dense, spreads by itself, and never needs to be reseeded. It takes very well to organic fertilizer and does not need copious amounts. Still, if you want it to be extraordinarily nice, copious amounts or organics will do that for you. The drawback to KBG is that it will turn brown during the winter if it gets too cold. That can be minimized to a few weeks with some effort on your part, but it can be done by normal people without special equipment. The other popular grass for your area is fescue. These do not spread quickly and should be reseeded in the thin spots every fall. The fescues do remain green throughout the year so many people mix fescue with KBG to get the best of both grass types. It sounds like you will be moving in and doing grass no earlier than next summer. That could be perfect. If you will be putting sod down, that is good timing (not great but good). If you are going to seed, then the heat of summer is a really bad time to do that. I would propose waiting until late August for seed. For a first step in seeding, once the land was prepped with the box blade, cover the (small??) area you want in grass with a load of mulch until late August. If your construction goes like most, you might not be moving in until then anyway. Then you won't be needing the mulch and can go straight to seed. What an adventure! Glad you wrote in now rather than writing in July to say you just seeded and nothing happened. I would suggest keeping an eye on this forum and others during the spring and getting a feel for the general nature of the issues. Lawn care is very easy if you simply water and mow correctly. With proper watering and mowing you should not need herbicides, preemergents, insecticides, or fungicides. Watch and learn. Repetition helps you learn.

The closeup of the grass with no herbicide is too blurry to determine the grass. Since you've probably killed it, your best bet may be to kill the rest of the lawn and start all over, in which case, the question is what kind of lawn do you want? If you want a showcase lawn, you can buy elite cultivars and make a custom blend of them. If you want an ok lawn, you can buy something off the shelf. Where do you live? Zone 6 is too big to figure out what grass would do best. The pictures look pretty sunny. Is the lawn mostly all sun? What exactly did you use? Some herbicides will prevent germination for a while.

I believe we have primarily kentucky blue grass. The grass in our back yard is in better shape than the grass in my front yard. I have been doing a lot of work on the grass in the front yard. I run an organic lawn care program. To do so, first you stop using chemicals on your lawn. I fertilize several times a year with organic lawn food like soybean meal, alfalfa meal, etc. Yes, I am out there pushing a spreader. I also applied corn gluten meal to the front bed as a preemergent this spring. You have to apply it before the forsythia bloom in order for it to be effective, and you want to apply it when there are going to be five dry days in a row. Last summer I had tons of weeds (I think prostrate knotweed) in my front bed, and I spent hours upon hours hand pulling it to try to prevent it from going to seed. I also have been treating both lawns twice a year with milky spore to try to prevent japanese beetles. Last fall, I had skunks digging in the grass for grubs, so on the advice of the garden center, I applied Milorganite and Molemax, which seemed to be effective in getting rid of the skunks. I also use my weed hound every spring especially but all summer too to get rid of dandelions and other weeds. I don't envision getting rid of any more of the front lawn. I also have the lawn service remove the grass cuttings in the spring instead of leaving them on the grass because of the weed seeds. For the back yard, the grass is in better shape so I am just fertilizing and applying milky spore back there. I may do the corn gluten meal next spring, too. Right now we have a big swingset with rubber tire mulch under it. I figure we'll have it for another four years. Then I want to take it out and turn it into a beautiful potager. I do worry a bit about what chemicals may have leached out of the rubber tire mulch and into the soil, but I'm sure I will use raised beds with fresh garden soil, and really, it's probably no more chemicals than what you buy at the grocery store. The only exception to my organic lawn care program is that I have a patch of evil creeping charlie that I am trying to eradicate. I read the the best time to do it is in the fall when the leaves are sending nutrients down to the roots, so I sprayed them with Weed B Gone max last year and I will do so again this fall.

Rather than pursuing habits that put our health at risk, then trying to retread it ... ... how about carrying on a sensible lifestyle from early on, so preserving our good health, rather than letting it deteriorate, then having to patch it up? Our countries are having a major problem with obesity these days, including among children ... and there's a large increase in diabetes, especially junvenile-onset type. Looks like major increases in health-care costs ahead. Maintaining and retreading good health is specially important in your country, where many must carry health insurance or pay for health issues themselves. I got $37.22 of medicine the other day, and it cost me $4.11. When I go to see my doc, there's no cost to me, and I don't carry health insurance. I do pay about $600.00 per year added to provincial income tax to help pay for health care. Medical costs are growing rapidly. My old uncle had had three hip replacements, and they didn't do that 50 years ago. They didn't do heart by-passes, or replace them, years ago. They're finding more complicated procedures frequently, thus almost always making many of them hugely expensive. So I don't see health care costs going down, any time soon. I'm thankful that I can choose whatever doctor I chose (if I can find one that takes new patients). I haven't visited my doctor except for annual check-up, for many years, until the most recent year or so. When I see him, I get what treatment that I need, without fussing with a health insurance carrier as to whether they'll pay for it or not ... or whether I'll have to pay for it myself. Two cataract operations last year - no direct cost to me. The Canadian single-payer system is a non-profit system. And there isn't any advertising expense. Makes sense to me. By the way - a substantial reason to encourage manufacturers to locate plants in Canada. ole joyful