Sit down because I'm jumping right into some science. This is for your husband to help understand why the bridge idea is not going to help you. Normal soil has an open pore structure that allows air and water to pass through it. Inside this structure lives 10s of thousands of species of beneficial microbes which thrive on the open pore structure. These microbes are Mother Nature's invention. As it turns out the species of microbes living in swampy land are different from those living in dryish land (lawns). When you allow standing water to stand for several days, that cuts off the air flow to the beneficial microbes and their populations begin to decrease. If this happens enough, normal grass will thin out and stop growing. They will be replaced by swamp grasses like nutgrass and some others. So it is important to keep the water from pooling on your lawn. Back to the issue... If your community has an ordinance that says homeowners must drain all water from their own property and not allow it to cross over onto a neighbor's land, then all you should have to do is call your city code compliance officers and make them deal with it. If you live in the savage west, then you might have to do it yourself. Talk to your neighbors and ask them to berm up their land at the fence to keep the water on their side. Since they already dug the ditch, they are unlikely to bend to your wishes. So when that doesn't work, berm up your side of the fence and push their water back onto their property (see how they like having standing pools of water!!). Six inches of berm would normally be plenty. Planting a lawn in the spring is not the best idea, but if you really have to you have to. If you can afford sod, then that should be better, but if you were planning to seed, I would not spend a lot on seed for a spring installation. What will happen is all that new grass will find itself competing with crabgrass which also sprouts in the spring. Your grass seed will be less hardy than the crabgrass and will thin out in the summer heat. It is not uncommon to have a full crabgrass lawn by July. It is much better to seed new grass in the fall because crabgrass seed is not sprouting then. It also gives the new grass all winter and spring to develop heat tolerant roots. Now a word on forum etiquette. This is not your thread. The original poster had a problem with soil structure. Your problem is neighborhood drainage. You should have opened a new topic so people who want to help you don't have to read through someone else's problem from last year - which is really not your problem. I also suspect you will need some advice on planting your lawn (spring? or fall - either one). Now is the time to ask, so post a new topic! When you ask about planting a new lawn, please mention specifically where you live. The zone system is not good for helping with lawns, so give a town or zip code. And if you want more help on the neighborhood drainage issue, I would still post a new topic with your new questions. This forum seems to have a lot of opinions about neighbors '-)

You did not say much about what you are cutting or how many acres you are cutting. If you cut the grass frequently, and before it becomes "hay" you may not need the sweeper. I usually cut so that the clippings are blown into the uncut grass. As I get nearly finished and I reverse the direction and blowing everything onto cut grass. Usually by this time the cuttings are quite fine and disappear. If there are still areas of heavy grass clipping I raise the mower deck as high as it will go and go over the clipping a couple of time until they disappear. Finally if there are still unacceptable area of grass clippings I get rid of them with the leaf blower after I have blown the cuttings from the mower. PS If you are new to mowing make sure to blow the grass clippings from the muffler area of the tractor. There are pages of warning is the book that came with my John Deere, like don't put your foot into the moving mower blades and other obvious things. The only safety problem I have ever had with the tractor occurred because there was no indication that the clippings could collect around the muffler. Smoke coming from under the mower is not a good sight.

Yes, you can aerate before verticutting. That would actually help to slice up the soil plugs. The purpose of verticutting is to create shallow slits for the seed to fall into, contact the soil and retain moisture. The slits keep the seed relatively in place, unless you get a real flooding rain. So when you verticut in two directions, you initially get what looks like a grid of grass coming up, but it fills in. I go a little crazy with a verticutter and mow in two directions and then do two directions on the diagonal, but I can get obsessive when I work on a lawn. You can fertilize all at once, after it's all done. That's the fun part. Use a starter fertilizer that contains extra phosphorus for robust root development. Then in mid-November, use a regular lawn fertilizer that is high in nitrogen, a quick release form. The purpose of that last feeding is to get the plants to produce a lot of food resources (sugars) that are then moved into the roots when the plants go dormant for winter. Come springtime, the grass uses those stored foods to emerge from dormancy, thicken up and grow nice and green. There is really nothing you can do to deal with weeds until the grass becomes established, so don't worry about weeds now. Get the turf up and growing. You don't want to do anything to weeds until you have mowed at least twice, but I would wait until next spring to spray. Young grass plants can be vulnerable to lawn weed killers. Also, and this is not fun, if you get a dry winter, you need to keep watering the new grass. It will need about a half inch of moisture every two or three weeks just to stay alive. That probably won't be an issue for you, but down here in KC, I have actually had to hook up hoses and water young turf in the winter. You ask good questions. Don't apologize. And it IS worth doing well, because it's a big job and the seed, fertilizer and equipment rentals are not cheap! Here is a K-State publication on fertilizing lawns. Most if not all of this can apply to SD. Here is a link that might be useful: Fertilizing Kansas Lawns

Thank you. Drought resistance is more important than drought tolerance here...I'm only 31, so I don't have too many years of memories...we've only had 1 "drought" that I can remember, the summer of '88. '99 or '00 was dry too, but not really drought conditions. In continued reading, I keep leaning towards TTTF over KBG. I think I figured out the "fluffy", short-growing grass that I had in the front yard as creeping bentgrass...it was ugly. The only thing still inhibiting me from buying some improved TTTF is not being able to see the grasses first hand. I've eradicated many clumps of very thick-bladed tall fescue...so I'm kinda afraid to seed my lawn with it, even though they've been improved to a finer blade. The clumps I've had look like this... http://www.msuturfweeds.net/images/galleries/t_fescue/1.jpg I know it's not gonna be as fine-looking as KBG, but I assume it is far better looking than the fescue in the above link. Looking at TTTF pictures online just isn't the same as being able to see it in person. I love the look that my KBG had...I just don't think I'll be able to maintain it throughout the whole yard to keep it pristine...but if TTTF doesn't compare somewhat to KBG in texture and color, I may just bite the bullet and do what I can to maintain it. I still really want nothing to do with PRG...6 or 7 years of no lawn rust until I seeded the back and side with the mixture in the 1st post. Still undecided...and slowly running out of time, especially if I go with KBG. Entire lawn is dead and heavily aerated. The local OSU extension says Aug. 15 - Sept. 15 is the best time to seed in northern Ohio.