I'm in Lake Wylie. My yard was similar to yours at one point. This is the easiest thing to to: do nothing now. Its too late to referb your lawn this year. If you try to plant grass now, you will get weeds and it will most likely die in the summer heat. Do this: 1. In late July/Early August, get a SOIL TEST! They are free (at the county co-op extension), and will tell you exactly what mix of nutrients you need to get your lawn back in shape. 2. In early August, kill the entire lawn with Roundup. First mow as low as you can. Buy the concentrate and a pump sprayer. Spray every last inch of your yard. After about a week, your entire lawn and all the weeds should be dead. If there are any spots still alive, kill them too. 3. Around mid-September, rent an aerator and aerate the lawn. Go over two or three times. The more holes you poke, the more places grass seed can make contact and grow. 4. Get some good seed. I used Lesco Tri-Gold tall fescue. Excellent stuff, perfect for the Carolinas. 5. Seed and apply fertilizer recommended by your soil test. Follow the recommendation on your soil test. If it says 15-0-15 in September and November, do it. Go to Lesco and let them know what is recommended and they will hook up up with what they got that closest to it. 6. In Mid-February, apply pre-emergent. I used Lesco Stonewall this year. Gives 5 months of protection. 7. Go back to step 1 and repeat. A few other points: 1. IMO, Scotts products suck and are a total waste of $. Have you ever seen a landscape pro using Turfbuilder? 2. Get good equipment. A good spreader. A good hose and sprinkler if you don't have irrigation. 3. Be patient. It will most likely take 2-3 years to get your lawn back to 100%. Good luck!

There are mixes of fescue and KBG that go together. I don't know what they are off hand but the seed sellers know what they have. If you kill the weeds, chances are different weeds will move in for the summer. I would leave them be and just practice taking excellent care of what you have. You'll be surprised how nice a field of weeds can look under proper care. Also get ready to fertilize on Memorial Day. That is your last chance for the summer (unless you want to try organic). Synthetic fertilizer and summer heat don't mix. The next opportunity is Labor Day. Now is the time to ask, What do you want out of your lawn? Do you want a show place? Do you want it mostly green most of the year? Do you want to sponsor sports activities or run large, playful dogs over it? Your wishes at this point will really dictate which grass types to favor. KBG will not grow in shade. KBG will spread and fill in where there are bare spots. Some fescues tolerate some shade but they will not spread by themselves to fill in holes. The more uniform your mix of seeds the more uniform it will look. At the transition area from shady to sunny you will see a mix of KBG fading into fescue. You will likely need to overseed the fescue every year to keep it dense. Also the answer to the question above will dictate how much time you take preparing for seeding. You can seed into an existing lawn or you can kill everything and do a renovation. The full renovation takes more planning and longer execution so you really want to do that right. Seeding into existing grass is a matter of mowing short, power raking, blowing off all the chaff from the power rake, drop the seed, roll the seed down, and watering. You can do all that relatively quickly. Renovating takes at least another two weeks to kill the grass first. With seed you get what you pay for. The seed you find at the box stores always has a small percentage of Weed and Other Crop listed on the guaranteed analysis. The weeds and other crop seeds you want to beware of are bentgrass and common bermuda. They don't have to list the exact species of weeds and other crop. All they have to do is list the weight percent in the bag. The problem with bentgrass and bermuda is the seeds are the size and weight of dust. Even a few thousandths of a pound will give you a lawn full of weeds. The best seed will have 0.00% of weed and other crop. Those will cost more but you don't have to start right away with a mess of tenacious weeds. Those seeds are sold on the Internet and at some really good seed houses. Clover is only a weed if you don't like the look. When I was a kid you could not buy grass seed that did not have plenty of clover seed in it. When clover is evenly seeded across the yard, it looks very plush. It gets white flowers every week. Clover grows to 4-5 inches high and stops growing. It never needs fertilizer and can tolerate soil conditions that would set back normal grass. I think it has a lot going for it. When it looks bad is when it is just clumps of clover in the grass. So back to business: If you are new, the place to start is to get your watering under control. If you are watering more than once a week now, stop that. Watch the grass so it does not wilt. If it does, then water, but the idea is to water longer, not more frequently. Your mileage will be different from your neighbors because of differences in soil, grass type, grass height, wind, and shade. Your performance will be different from mine due to heat, humidity, sunlight, and clouds. Oh and your sprinkler will be different, so you can't just say to water for an hour but you can say an inch. My setup takes 8 hours to get an inch of water. Fortunately my soil and shade conditions don't require more than a half inch per week. Before you water each time, spray with baby shampoo at the rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Use the Ortho hose end sprayer with the big dial on it. They are sold everywhere. Soap will allow the irrigation water to follow to seep deeper into the soil. This step will save you a lot of grief. Deeper water penetration will stay in the soil longer and prevent runoff. The soil also benefits from improved microbial populations. Spray each time before irrigating for the next two months and you'll be good to go. It will soften your soil without aerating. Anytime you feel a driving need to do something to the lawn, apply organic fertilizer. It will never hurt to apply even if you applied yesterday. Or you could spray it with molasses, milk, or even baby shampoo. These are helpful and can be done all at once or never, depending on your interest in this hobby. If you are interested in reading about the modern approach to organic lawn care, go to the GW Organic Gardening forum and find the FAQs. Scroll to the bottom of the list to find the Organic Lawn Care FAQ. It will point you to a low cost, low hassle approach to lawn care. I promise it will surprise you if you are unfamiliar with the topic. I stopped counting downloads on that FAQ years ago but since then it has spread all over the Internet forums. I'm guessing several hundred thousand downloads??? I know a lot of people who have gotten started with it and have spectacular lawns. I'll attach a motivational photo for you. I have had this photo around for years since it was posted here at GW by a member named William. I had forgotten what his circumstances were and have recently posted that this was a KBG lawn where he had recently raised his mower height. Last week I found a text file I had stored with my original copy of the photo. I had this all wrong. It is a fescue lawn that William had converted over to an organic program. He was sharing the results. Here it is. This is not unusually good for an organic program following the 1-2-3 plan I posted earlier. You should expect this. 1. Proper watering 2. Proper mowing height 3. Proper fertilizer Note that weeds are not a problem when you have this all under control. William has a weed in his yard. You can play Where's Waldo with it if you like. He was very happy, though.

Can you post a couple pictures? The best time to photograph a lawn is when a cloud goes overhead. It would be good to see from far enough away to see the trees and then a close up of the dry spot in the middle. Did you have Marathon in Calabasas before? If not where? And what was your watering regimen (how often and for how long)? Can we assume you are watering this lawn the same way? When were the last two times you fertilized, or have you fertilized yet? Hopefully your close up picture will help someone here to identify your current grass type. Different grasses can be eradicated by different means. Sometimes it's as simple as stopping watering. I'm not sure you will ever be able to apply enough water for those trees. That is a lot of timber to keep moist. The tool which professional landscapers use to prep a garden is a box blade pulled behind a tractor. This is what it looks like in action. The ripper bars you see on the box blade (like a rake sitting above the soil in the blade) can be used to remove most small roots, but there is a limit. When you get ready to get rid of the trees, you might want to consider major stump removal, not grinding, and root removal throughout the rest of the yard. For those two jobs they might bring in a small bulldozer or other heavy equipment.

From the looks of it, you're seeing the impact of a spring seeding--the death rate is fairly high in summer, and the probability of a disease on a young lawn is much higher than a mature one. For now? I'd back off on the watering as much as you can, but don't majorly stress the lawn during a hot July. Definitely don't back off during a period where you won't be there to observe it. Once temperatures start to drop, evaluate what you have--that should be in mid-August or so. Reseed if you have holes, water for the new seed, and back off again slowly once that's sprouted. The new seed will have all of fall, early winter, and spring to grow strong roots before summer hits again. The dying stems are giving up in the heat as they have too little root mass to maintain them. That's the danger with a spring seeding, although if you're going to get away with it, rye is the grass type that will do best. You just didn't get lucky. For now, you'll just have to live with them, although the constant watering is probably making that a bit worse. I'd try to find a happy medium. Existing dying stems will fall off, hit the soil, and decay. You can help that along by feeding organically around August 1, or feeding synthetically around September 1. Don't use a synthetic too early as it really stresses the lawn. I don't see much evidence of a current disease on the lawn, although the dead stems can and will grow fungi that eat dead material. They're no danger to your living lawn. Off the cuff and overall? I'd actually say this looks pretty darned good for a spring seeding in a harsh summer! I think you'll get some recovery in fall when temperatures start to drop and the situation will improve markedly--barring a disease set off by excessive watering, of course.