I took a gamble and and started my main renovation project in mid-August for just this very reason. So far it is paying off. I had good germination within a week and everything is really starting to fill in now.

I'm a bit north of you but still concerned, we could get a few inches on Saturday. I seeded this past Sunday, so the timing could not be much worse. My soil absorbs moisture fairly well, but there is a slight slope, and at the top of the slope the lawn is bordered by a concrete walkway, and above that is my roof, which pours rain onto the concrete. So I get some big water at the top of the lawn and it runs down hard.

I have a small pile of sand, and some good size cotton drawstring bags, so as ridiculous as it may sound I'm actually going to make up a few sand bags to try to divert the flow at the dripline onto the adjacent driveway.

Good luck, I hope you don't get hit too hard.

Paul

Okay, well good luck with those sandbags, Paul. I seeded last Friday, so about the same shape, but I've got a lot of established grass that I hope will hold things in check.

supturb89 - I should have done that too, but down here it would have have baked to death with the mid 90's every day.

This was my only week to do this work. I scalped and raked yesterday (ouch!), will core aerate today, watch it all wash away tomorrow and then try to seed on Sunday in a mud pit. This ain't funny!

well s_d, at least you'll have good seed to soil contact with all those little aerated soil plugs being pulverized into mud. Might need to wear your golf shoes/tree-climbing boots/mountain-climbing boots/etc for that application. :)

How did you guys to the south of New England make out? I got about an inch very early and very fast this morning but the soil held. Then today the seedlings really started taking off. Rain is just starting to pick up now and I really don't know what to expect. Local weather guys are going bananas, but I'm starting to wonder if I'll see even two inches by morning, which I would be glad about.

Well the seed that sprouted seems fine in my back yard. The stuff that didn't is gone and the re-grading is screwed. Next weekend I get to go buy another 5-10 bags of compost. Heck, maybe I will just go buy a yard and have it delivered. Probably be cheaper anyways and I could level both front and back...

Well, even with close to 5" I seemed to have faired out okay. I spent a lot of money and my own labor to level out this 13000 sqft of lawn, but even so I still had some runoff. I did do some spot watering every PM last week trying to get it to germinate faster before the flooding hit and for the most part that seemed to work well. May keep that in mind for the next go-around.

I must report the sad news that some earthworms were harmed during my core aeration. Poor little fellows - I hope they left some off spring in the soil. However, the good news is that even with a good 18 hours of steady rainfall and some of it torrential my yard held up very well. I have no idea how much rain we got, but would guess at 3-4" minimum probably closer to 6. I'm convinced that the core aeration made the soil much more capable of absorbing that amount of water.

Sunday was a "fix a few rough spots" and seed day. Put down a 50/50 mix of tall fescue and perennial rye (5.2#/1000) and added a little KBG for grins. Just got through getting my Orbit timers programmed and set up so watering begins in earnest tomorrow morning. My biggest problem now will be keeping the leaves off.