That area is near dead from drought stress last season. It needs ONE INCH of water ONCE A WEEK. Very few sprinklers can dish out a full inch of water in 10 minutes. Mine takes 8 HOURS to get a full inch. You should be able to fit an inch into your city conservation schedule unless you are limited to 10 minutes per week. You'll have to measure the output of your sprinklers. Use a tuna can or cat food can and time how long it takes to get an inch. It also needs fertilizer. I can help you with an organic approach but not with chemicals. I've forgotten everything I once knew about chemical ferts. Here is the 1-2-3 of lawn care... Basics of Lawn Care After reading numerous books and magazines on lawn care, caring for lawns at seven houses in my life, and reading numerous forums where real people write in to discuss their successes and failures, I have decided to side with the real people and dispense with the book and magazine authors. I don't know what star their planet rotates around but it's not mine. With that in mind, here is the collected wisdom of the Internet savvy homeowners and lawn care professionals summarized in a few words. If you follow the advice here you will have conquered at least 50% of all lawn problems. Once you have these three elements mastered, then you can worry about weeds (if you have any), dog spots, and striping your lawn. But if you are not doing these three things, they will be the first three things suggested for you to correct. Watering Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an hour in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. Do not spread this out and water for 10 minutes every day. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. If that does not work, then you might have to water more than once per week during the summer's hottest period. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. You will have to learn to judge when to water your own lawn. If you live in Las Vegas your watering will be different than if you live in Vermont. Adjust your watering to your type of grass, humidity, wind, and soil type. It is worth noting that this technique is used successfully by professionals in Phoenix, so...just sayin.' The other factors make a difference. If you normally water 1 inch per week and you get 1/2 inch of rain, then adjust and water only 1/2 inch that week. Mowing Every week mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. However, bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses will become the most dense when they are mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. In fact there are special mowers that can mow these grasses down to 1/16 inch. Dense grass shades out weeds, keeps the soil cooler, and uses less water than thin grass. Tall grass can feed the deep roots you developed in #1 above. Tall grass does not grow faster than short grass nor does it look shaggy sooner. Once all your grass is at the same height, tall grass just looks plush. Fertilizing Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 5 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above. Follow the directions on the bag and do not overdo it. Too little is better than too much. At this point you do not have to worry about weed and feed products - remember at this point you are just trying to grow grass, not perfect it. Besides once you are doing these three things correctly, your weed problems should go away without herbicide. Really really tall St Augustine needs much less water than when mowed. Here is a picture of my 35-pound dog sitting in my "lawn". It looks more like a pasture but there are no weeds. I live on the edge of the desert and tomorrow I'm going to water this spot where she's sitting for the first time this year. That grass is about 20 inches high. Of course to have grass like that you can't be hampered by homeowners associations or pesky neighbors (or spouses). At this house I don't have to worry about that.

gator 01, the only pest you may have missed in the soap flush is the bermuda grass mite which cannot be easily seen without a hand lens. After eliminating pests, the next step is to eliminate disease - essentially fungi. The symptom you describe sounds like dollar spot usually associated with St. Augustine. Try this site. Turfgrass Diseases in Georgia. Finally, the early morning webs; sod webworms leap to mind but again, not associated with bermuda. Somehow I feel that they are significant. Let us know.

Thanks for the location. That eliminates many grasses from the list of grasses you might have. If it wore out from a picnic table and has not recovered since moving the table, it could be you have fescue in that area. Fescue does not heal itself like, say, Kentucky bluegrass does. These two grasses look much the same from any distance at all. Now is not a great time to be seeding, but it's getting worse every day. If you have some seed, put it down yesterday. Scatter the seed, walk on it, and water just enough to keep the surface moist all the time to germinate the seed. Water 3x per day for about 5 minutes for 3 weeks or until you think you have 80% germination. Around Memorial Day you can fertilize. Don't fertilize until then.

Just a couple more things. Do you think it is bad for any non mature grass that I plant in the spring to be given a granular fungicide? Not at all. As a matter of fact, fungicides can be applied right at seeding time to protect against fungal issues like damping off which plague newly germinated grass. Grass seed that is coated is a lot of times impregnated with fungicide, among other things. Also I don't want to ask a stupid question but how do I determine the pound rate of nitrogen fertilizer to be spread from a bag of scotts 30-0-3 fertilizer? The 3 numbers found on every bag of fertilizer represent the percentages of Nitrogen(N), Phosphorus(P) and Potassium(K) in the fertilizer product. We generally refer to it as the N-P-K. So the Scotts 30-0-3 is 30% N, 0% P and 3% K. If you were trying to apply 1 pound of N, you would spread 3.3 pounds of the Scotts 30-0-3 product. If you were to use a 20-0-5 fertilizer, you would spread 5 pounds of product to get 1 pound of N. And so on. I need to clarify, the recommendation of 4 pounds of N per year is per thousand square feet. You should not exceed 1 pound of N per thousand sq ft per application per month, so the 3 pounds of N that need to go down in the fall would be broken into 3 monthly apps of 1 pound N each.