Are you sure you're getting 1 to 1.5 inches? How did you measure that? If so then you are correct in your watering. 3x per week is a recipe for a dead lawn in many cases. The reason the aerator only went 1 inch deep is the soil is hard. Try this: apply baby shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet followed by a full inch of water. If you get any runoff before an inch is applied, then stop immediately, let the moisture sink in for 15 to 30 minutes, then continue watering until you get the full inch. A week later water the full inch again. A week after that, repeat the shampoo and irrigation. That should set your soil up to allow much deeper water penetration. You can test the hardness before and after by sticking a screwdriver in as far as you can. Normally after the shampoo treatment, people abandon the idea of aeration. Since you have already aerated, make the most of it by trying to fill your aeration holes with water. Try to flood the soil and get water to penetrate deeper. The idea of getting the water to penetrate deeper is to improve the beneficial microbe population in the soil. Normally there are fungi that soften the soil for you. When the soil has deeper moisture, the temperature and moisture levels are moderated which allows the fungi to thrive. That process takes a few weeks to happen, but once it does, it will last for years.

This topic is over a year old but what the heck...nobody is going to read for these comments, anyway. If deep and infrequent watering does not work, then you have the wrong grass. Fescue is the wrong grass for the Mojave desert. Yes, I realize it is an extremely popular grass, but when trying to grow it in the desert, it will consume all the water you can give it. If water was prevalent, it would not be a desert. It would be much better to select a variety of grass that is strongly adapted to your area. bpgreen can help steer you in the right direction but you will have to do some ground work with your county extension agent. Despite what the previous poster suggests, you will NEVER need a rototiller to prepare your soil. There is no six-inch 'usual depth' for preparing soil for turf at the homeowner level. After reading comments and complaints on this forum and others for 10 years, I'm convinced a rototiller will destroy your soil structure. In three years, when the structure finally reestablishes itself, it would leave you with a bumpy surface. You can create a deeply organic soil by working entirely at the surface without aerators or tillers. Look in the Organic Garden forum and find the FAQs. At the bottom of the list is the Organic Lawn Care FAQ. It will get you started. In the case of organics, more is better until you get up to about 80 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Beyond that point you have to start thinking about whether you might be smothering the grass. If you want to get your organic numbers up fast, apply alfalfa, soy bean meal, or whatever you can get, at 20 pound per 1,000 square feet every week all summer long. It will cost you a little more but it has been shown to work. If you are going to that extreme, then before you put all those organics down, you might want to invest in a good soil test from Logan Labs, not your local extension service. Again, this is after reading for 10 years. Logan Labs has an excellent reputation. Local extension service has, at best, a reputation for having poorly motivated/educated personnel and too often incorrect test results. The Logan Labs test will enable you to tune up your micro nutrients better than any extension service test.

>>On July 29 he applied 25-0-6 and on August 23rd 24-0-12. The grub prevention and fertilization was done early June. Bingo. The August 23rd was close enough, but the July 29th one probably did the damage by burning the root systems. On the up side, the feeder roots weren't up at the time, so structural damage to the above-ground plant wasn't fatal. I'd water regularly. We're actually also in the correct time period for feeding, so plan to feed at bag rate again on October first or so with something gentle, like Milorganite. In this case, it'll also act as an iron addition (which I don't think will help, but won't hurt either). This doesn't look like a fungal infection because it's too even and too limited to your lawn only. Bacterial problem and insect infestation, ditto. In the future, the correct times to fertilize a northern lawn are Memorial Day, Labor Day, October 1 (optional), and when it stops growing but is still green. That last date varies by year and by location.

Pay a teenager (or bully able bodies offspring if you have any) to simply poke a border fork, at 6inch intervals, straight downwards into the sward, then top dress with fine sand (brushing into the holes)..This will maintain enough aeration for most purposes and is a standard method for smaller urban lawns. You can also buy a hand scarifier, which will remove thin cores of turf (but harder than using a fork) and has an even worse tendency to compact the soil rather than lifting out neat cores. Mechanical aerators will remove soil and also moss and other surface gak, and are really for heavily trafficked areas and groundskeeping...but personally, I love powerful plant machinery and would hire one if I could defray the costs somewhat.