That is too bad. We warn and warn and warn against spring seeding but you know who gets all the attention? The magazines and TV that put on a full court press to get your seeding done in the spring. What kills me is the availability of bermuda grass seed in March in my area. Bermuda is a HOT season grass and seed will not sprout for months after it goes on sale. Now that it is hot as blazes here, they have put the fescue blends on the shelf. In San Antonio??? Puh LEEZE! Yes you only thought you had done all your research. It always pains me to find out I overlooked something really basic that everyone else seems to know. Like, How did I miss THAT? Grass1950 got it right with the one step forward and two steps back. It is heartening to see you have a positive attitude toward a second reno in the same year. I would say your lawn as is has a shot at recovery but it will not be until this time next year that you see the results. If you reno again in August, you can have it looking pretty good by October. KBG is one of those ground covers with the following characteristics: The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps. Have patience and you will be rewarded. 1. Find the seed you want. Check the NTEP trials for your state and area to see what they like. Lean toward those but don't necessarily commit yet. Look at previous years trials for other varieties. Some are more readily available and perhaps the newer ones offer only marginal improvements. With seed you usually get what you pay for. You should pay more for seed with 0.00% Weed Seed and 0.00% Other Crop. There are a few pesky grasses with seeds the size of dust that can create the wrong lawn if you get them in your seed. Look online for seed suppliers and ask here about actual human's experiences with the vendor. Please don't look at anything that has rye seed in it. The reason takes a lot of words but suffice it to say it sprouts quickly and gives you false hopes as to your new seed. 2. If all you have is annual weeds, then don't respray the RoundUp. Just rent the power rake and set the blades to shred right at ground level. Some places the blades will not hit the ground. Don't panic. Shred the existing weeds and grass and blow or rake it all up. Then reevaluate your surface. You will still have some low spots and high spots. Use your judgement to lower the blades another 1/4 inch to dig up and shred the rest of the plants in the low spots. With this run you will also shred the surface of the high spots loosening the soil. Try to remember where the high spots were and hit them a little harder to loosen more soil. Then use a carpet or something big and relatively heavy to drag around and move the loose soil into the holes. The carpet will have enough horizontal structure to not fall into the holes itself and remove the soil but it will pull loose soil in. Drag that carpet every which way until you are happy with the way it looks. Then water it to settle the dust. I should say that you will suffer the ill effects of rototilling for 3 more years as your soil settles. Consider this a training session for the ultimate leveling you might do in 2015 or so. The reason you had bumpy soil in the first place was because someone rototilled. It is possible to have putting green perfection even at home. Check the archives here to find more on leveling the lawn. 3. Scatter the seed. Roll the seed down with a water fillable roller (rented). The purpose is to get good contact between the seed and soil. It is the soil against the seed that keeps the seed from drying out. Covering the seed with top dressing is too random. You can have large areas that don't take because the covering was too thick. Just roll it. KBG takes a looonnnnggg 3 weeks to come in to the 80% mark. Keep the moisture on as you did before for the entire time. Don't be tempted by early sprouts to back off on watering yet. At 3 weeks you should be approaching 80% germination which is about all the seed producers guarantee. 4. Once the seed is up, you can start thinking about adjusting your mowing height (3 to 3.5 inches for KBG). You can start thinking about backing off on the frequency of watering. Normal for the fall is to apply a full inch once a month. Don't apply 1/4 inch per week or 1/30 inch per day. Apply it all in one day. The reason for that is, remember how you water for new seed (every day), that is what weed seeds are looking for. Once again I need to warn you that the annual weeds you saw in August were summer annuals. There are also winter/spring annuals that you will not see. Those plants will sprout along with your grass but will not show their heads until spring. For the most part we lovingly call those wild flowers but they are traditional weeds. They are annuals and will die in late spring. Again, don't panic. Once your grass is in in the fall I believe you can apply a preemergent herbicide (not corn gluten meal) to minimize the spring weeds. You can also fertilize with organics and even chemical ferts in the fall. Tiemco will be along with more specific help on that. 5. What you want to do in the fall is get your new seeds up and mowed a few times. This will prepare the roots for the summer heat next year. You want to get it as dense as possible for 1-year grass. That density will protect your lawn from weeds of all kinds next season. 6. Early next spring you will be tempted by all manner of advertising to apply fertilizer early. Please resist. KBG will put on enough growth in the early spring that pumping it up with fertilizer is not needed. Wait until after the early flush of new growth to apply the first app. Think in terms of Memorial Day for now. You sound like someone who is going to take this lawn pretty seriously. If so you should go ahead and get a soil test at Logan Labs in Ohio. For $20 they give a much better test than any university or county extension service. Post your test results here and you will get help as to what to add and where to find the additives.

This weed which looks just like grass is fine and delicate. It is one of the first grasses to come up in the spring. As soon as temps rise the grass goes yellow. It is easily taken out in clumps as if one would be peeling away a carpet. It is very invasive. If I were to take it out right now, I would have many bare patches in my very small area of lawn. What type of weed is this and how can I get rid of it. I live in Washington DC

While bermuda can be beautiful, it is a hassle to keep it looking nice. It is one of the few grasses that should be mowed at the mower's lowest setting. Partially due to that, it should be mowed twice a week during the summer to keep from scalping it every week. Bermuda also needs as much water as all the other lawns if you want it to be green. The idea that it needs less water depends on your tolerance for brown grass. When bermuda gets very dry it becomes dormant and turns brown. When St Augustine dries out completely, it dies. Thus you have to water St Aug to keep it alive but you could stop watering bermuda altogether and it would remain alive but brown. Bermuda also needs monthly doses of high nitrogen fertilizer to stay green. This is to say that you can have a bermuda lawn but if you are not willing to maintain it, it is going to look raggedy. It can also thin out and become a haven for weeds. Back in the 50s, before the modern herbicides became inexpensive, when you bought grass seed you got a mixture of a fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, rye, and even clover. The idea was that one of the grasses would dominate in almost any soil and you could have a green lawn with multiple species of plants. That approach is one you might consider. You are in the transition zone meaning that you would be able to grow almost any grass.

Unfortunately, I'm positive it's poison sumac. It is growing right at the corner of my house where the stream runs underneath so it's very wet and muddy. There are several sumacs here but this particular one has the unmistakable red stems coming off of the tree branches and stands out from the others. I can't get to it to take a good pic because it's being protected by an infestation of the Giant ragweed and poison ivy (which is now creeping towards my yard) There was a second poison sumac as well in the drain field to the right of our home that had been positively identified by a professional and removed last year. I guess with the surrounding wooded area, the natural spring the mushy wet field here, we have a perfectly comfortable growing habitat for it. Looking at the map in your link, my area is one of the highlighted places for it so I'm not really surprised by it.