Wow! Big difference with the photos! I agree, this forum lacks some features. Your lawn actually looks really nice, and it looks like it took the summer pretty decent other then the couple of dead spots. Those really shouldn't be a big deal to fix. Fertilizer from the seed super store is expensive. For your situation, almost anything will do. You could have the soil tested but it doesn't look worth it. To clarify on the aeration, I would recommend renting an aerator, and running it over the yard 3-4 times before overseeding, especially focusing on the dead areas. Before you do that cut the grass super short at roughly 1"-1.5" and bag it as well (this is part of the overseeding). Let me caution you that those aerators are extremely heavy and awkward. After seeing the larger pictures, don't till the dead patches up, there's enough good grass to save. If you really don't want to do the short mowing and aeration, I think you can probably skip it, and try it without. However, I think you will have best results if you do. You're right about the small lawn! That's smaller then I thought. 10lbs. would be an ample supply to you and your neighbor. :) Honestly, after seeing the larger pictures, every picture I see looks like you have fescue. It's too thick bladed for bluegrass. It is a short cut for fescue. Having it cut taller may help the water problems next year. Your yard looks like it's in pretty good condition. You can make seeding just as complicated or as simple as you please. It doesn't look to me like it needs tons of help to catch back up. If it were me, I would cut it short, aerate (I have an aerator, which makes it easier for me), seed (fescue), fertilize, then water, of course. Should take a morning, or less. Stick with it!

You can't know how much trouble you saved yourself by writing in here before doing anything else. Your worst problem is you have dallisgrass, not crabgrass. Crabgrass would die normally at the first frost, but not dallisgrass. It is a perennial and will take over quickly if you don't stop it. Since it is a grass, anything you use to kill it will also kill your bermuda. But since you have bermuda, it will grow back without doing anything else. Your second worst problem is the St Augustine weed. It, too, will take over under certain conditions. You don't have to do those, but unless you go the extra mile, a properly cared for bermuda lawn infested with St Aug will always look weedy. Possibly the easiest way to get rid of it is to make it sick. That's easy because all you have to do is cover it with some newspaper and wet it down every night. Leave the paper on for about a week and you should start to see lesions on the grass blades that look like the spots on this grass. Once you see that you can peel the paper off and let Nature take its course. The disease will spread throughout the St Aug and wipe it out. Since it does not come back from seed, once it's gone, it's gone. Bermuda might get the disease, but St Aug gets it fast and furious. It will die out in a month or so. If you get a freeze before it all dies out this year, the disease will come back next spring to get the rest of it. The bermuda will fill in as fast as the St Augustine dies out. Now the problem you don't know you have, and the problem that could easily become your biggest problem, is seeding into your existing bermuda. DO NOT DO THAT. Bermuda needs no seed. Once you have it, you practically have it for life. The problem with seeding into it is that the seed is very nearly a different species of plant from the grass you already have. What you have is a very good hybrid called Tif 419. What you get in seed is a variety of common bermuda seeds. The two plants do not mix well together. And I happen to have a picture of that, too. The fine bladed grass is Tif 419. The coarse bladed stuff running over top of the Tif is an invasion of common bermuda. As with St Augustine, once you have a mix of Tif with common, it always looks weedy. Find the Bermuda Bible online and memorize it. There are things you should be doing all the time. I can summarize: Every month: fertilize with a high nitrogen fertilizer Every week: water deeply 2x per week: mow But get the BB, it will explain when not to do those things. For your shady area you do want St Augustine. If you get a dwarf variety you can mow at the same height as the bermuda. If you cannot get a dwarf, then it is best to mow St Aug at the mower's highest setting (4 inches). St Aug is much less intensive to care for: Memorial Day: fertilize with a regular fertilizer (not weed-n-feed) Every week after the temps get high: water once, deeply, and mulch mow high Labor Day: fertilize with a regular fertilizer Thanksgiving: fertilize with a regular fertilizer By the way, centipede grass is out of the question in Dallas' alkaline soils.

Very nice to see you're doing some homework. Can't tell you how many times someone writes in with a question that's identical to one posted a day earlier. In your picture #1 what's going on with the brown in the lower left corner? Is that an optical illusion or is the soil heaped up 10 inches higher than the concrete? If it's not an illusion, do you have any issues with water backing up toward the house? And if not, then it would look better with a little retaining wall down there. Also in the first picture, what do you think is going on along the driveway with the tan area? My first thought was chinch bugs but then I thought it might be car exhaust cooking the grass. It only takes a minute or two of hot exhaust to cook grass. If nobody parks a car right there with the exhaust pointed at that spot, then go to YouTube and search for chinch bugs. Mute the sound so you don't have to listen to the ignorant comments made by the people shooting the videos. Those videos are good to learn how to find and recognize chinch bugs. They're not helpful when it comes to getting rid of the pests. You have what will be a very nice lawn once you get the moisture and fertilizer under control. If you want it still nicer, then you'll have to get a soil test.

Becky, thank you for taking the time to make some suggestions. This is all great advice and I'm already looking at how to tackle this with the rest of the summer ahead of me. I cannot say for certain about the clay content, but our area contains thick red dirt, rocks and other material so assumed clay. I appreciate your thoughts about holding off on Milorganite now if brown patch is a problem, as I have had to fight some dollar spot in the past. So no Nitrogen now? I am sure the picture is hard to show, but the yard is more yellow than green. I'm just worried about a summer that 'burns' the grass since it is not thick at all and very exposed (we have hot and humid summers). I've spent a bit of time researching your recommendations and am thinking the following: - Apply some baby shampoo (may try this weekend yet) - Put down 11 lb/k of gypsum (will likely tackle this next weekend) - SOP two weeks later, then again in August, Sept and October? Or only three applications total? - Milorganite in August and again in September - Early fall - overseed - November - fast release nitrogen fertilizer What about the K20? (Sorry my research isn't helping me out there). Thoughts? Is this the better plan than your first recommendation of a balanced 10-10-10 now and another later in the summer? Thank you very much again, Don