I'm not sure what other forums you've been reading, but most of your plan would be found elsewhere.

1. Scalp the yard and bag the clippings.

Power rake to get rid of all the crap that's dead or dying.Core aerate so I can more easily introduce some healthy soil into what's already there.Bring in top soil to level everything.Plant seed.Fertilize.

1. You need much more work than scalping.
2. Power rake might be all you need. Set it to dig 1/4-inch deeper than the soil level and let it rip. Spend more time on the high spots and less on the low spots until it's level. Or set it deeper and use a drag (like a baseball infield drag) to level it.
3. No need to aerate.
4. No need for topsoil unless after all the leveling you have low spots. Once you get into the leveling, you might find that you have too much topsoil and have to haul some away to make it drain right.
5. This is a good step.
6. You can wait a month to fertilize. Fertilizer is taken up by the plant roots and you won't have any for a month. The seed is full of nutrients that will carry the new plants over for several weeks.

1. Do I really not need to till that garden area? As you can
   see, the soil is pretty bad off and since my main yard experience till
   now has been with gardening, my instinct is to turn all that soil over
   and mix in a bunch of compost. But I know tilling is a no-no here, and I
   understand why.

Is the power raking necessary?What seed should I use? I love the grass that's in the last picture
above. It's soft and green and thick but I have no idea what type it is.
I don't mind taking on this project this Fall or in the Spring, so
whatever grass type I end up with will determine when I start the
project. Since Richmond is a transitional zone I haven't been able to
figure out what the best option would be: cool weather or warm weather
grass.

1. Where did you get the idea that you had to till? I cannot see the soil chemistry or biology from here, so whether it is good, bad, or neutral requires more testing. Fight your instinct here. And for your future garden, continue to fight your instinct. Instead of tilling, drill a hole and put your plants in as if you were planting a tree.
2. Power raking might be the most necessary thing you do.
3. Since you have full sun, and since you live in the north (sort of - as far as your grass is concerned), then Kentucky bluegrass would work as would any of the fescues and rye grasses. Fescues have the feature of remaining green every winter. KBG can remain green and might be green almost every winter in your area. KBG is a 'sod forming' grass that will spread by itself after a year or two. Fescue is a bunch grass that will not spread as fast as a glacier moves. Thus it needs to reseeded every fall if it gets thin for any reason. Many people mix rye, fescue, and KBG to gain the benefits of all three and mask the shortcomings of all three. In any case, fall is THE time to seed, not spring. Fall begins when the summer heat starts to break and the evenings feel cooler. That might be August for you but more likely early September.

Okay now. Since this is a total renovation, you might consider another approach.

1. Round up everything to kill it and see what you have for a soil surface. You're going to have holes and high spots likely caused by rototilling for past vegetable garden adventures in the middle of the yard.
2. Power rake to 1 inch deep and drag all the loose soil to fill the holes. Don't let the rake dig down into the ground deeper than 1 inch. Water to settle the loose soil. Use sand or left over topsoil to fill the new holes you created by settling it with water. Then settle it with water again. Then use sand or left over topsoil to fill any new low spots. Ideally you will end up with a yard that drains away from the house to the sides and out to the street or an official drainage ditch.
3. Once you have the final profile, water the yard 3x per day very lightly to keep the soil surface moist. This will germinate any weeds you have in there. Continue this watering for a week.
4. Round up any new growth you see. It might be grass and it might be weeds. More likely to be weeds than grass with only 1 week of water.
5. Scatter seed at the recommended rate.
6. Roll the seed down to ensure good seed-to-soil contact.
7. Water 3x per day lightly to keep the seed and soil moist but not saturated. Continue for 2 weeks for rye, 3 weeks for fescue, and a month for Kentucky bluegrass seed. If you use a mix, don't get fooled by the rye coming in fast and think you can cut back on the frequency. Some people do that and then wonder why they didn't get any KBG.
8. You can apply organic fertilizer when you put the seed down if you want to. The organics take 3 weeks to "activate" anyway and once the roots come in, it will still be there. In that way it is different from chemical fertilizers.
9. Mow when the grass gets up to 5 inches. Mulch mow it down to 4 with your mower set at the highest setting.

This is exactly the type of advice I was looking for. Thanks dchall. I thank you. My lawn thanks you. And my neighbors thank you.

Agree with dchall's reply. Get rid of the grass. Fall is on its way, which is the best time to grow. You'll have to get rid of anything that resembles crab grass before it seeds more than what is there. I'm glad you're getting rid of that garden IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LAWN. It could have easily gone in a corner . Definitely don't need to till that. If you were continuing the garden, then yes. It just looks dry and dead because there is no grass to keep it shaded from losing water from the soil faster.

Definitely get a mix of seeds. Fescue doesn't typically go to seed, nor does it grow laterally and fill in bare spots. If you have children constantly running around you'll want kentucky blue grass to fill in wear spots vs going all turf type tall fescue. The KBG doesn't grow from seed as fast as the rye and fescue, so you'll see the rye and fescue pop up first and it might look like patches of bare spots. Give it about 2 weeks before you throw in seed to bare spots just to make sure nothing is coming up. You'll also want a seed mix right off the bat because if you get a heavy rain before the seed has germinated and grown to a decent height, the seed fertilizer, and dirt is going some where. The sooner the seed is up, the more likely that soil is not going to move in a heavy rain. If you want to switch to a single type of grass lawn in the future that shouldn't be a problem. The seed you throw down the most will win in the end, but know that it's easier for KBG to out compete the fescue.

Also, I've learned that there is definitely a difference in quality if you are buying bags of soil to fill in low spots. I typically spend an extra dollar to get a name brand bag of soil. I've noticed with the cheapest bags you'll get a lot of sand mixed in as well as a smaller stones and mulch bits. The name brand soil will look obviously darker, which probably means it has more organic matter (vs sand which is inorganic) and will be more nutrient rich for your lawn.

Thanks James.

Is there a particular brand of seed that is more trusted than the others? I've been looking at a local company's seed mix which is:

29.80% Aquavita Tall Fescue

29.80 % Honkytonk Tall Fescue

22.86% Rhambler Tall Fescue

13.91% 3RD Millennium Tall Fescue

2.97% Brooklawn Kentucky Bluegrass

0% Other Crop

0% Weed Seed

Looks like Pennington's Smart Seed Fescue/Bluegrass mix would also do, although neither of them has ryegrass.

I was in your boat a couple weeks ago, completely unsure of how to tackle my lawn reno. This site helped immensely. I basically laid out the plan that dchall_san_antonio laid out for a complete reno above. Seed mix selection was probably the most daunting task. Here is how I approached it:

- Figure out the type of grass you want - KBG, TTTF, Ryegrass, or a mix of a couple of these. It looks like you have plenty of sun, so from what I understand, KBG will do well if you're willing to put in a little extra effort to get it established.

- Look at the NTEP results for different cultivars in your area. I think these are probably your best bet for Richmond - http://www.ntep.org/states/va1/va1_kb.htm. This which show you which cultivars to best in different categories.

- Decide which cultivars you want to use and order them from a reputable seed company that sells sod-quality seed. I used seedsuperstore.com. It was also cheaper for me to order a custom blend than to order seed in 10 lb bags and try to mix it myself.

*Something j4c11 pointed out to me - not all seeds are the same size. Fescue seed is much larger than KBG seed, so one pound of fescue seed will only have about 10% as many seeds as one pound of KBG. Be aware of this if you're trying to create a mix of different grass types.

Good luck, absorb all the info you can on this site.

About leveling, top soiling and power raking. What we use to do at this golf course I worked at, was dig up a big chunk of the grass that was low and put some cheap dirt under it and stomp it down and water a day or so before doing anything. It's kind of a keep it simple stupid method, but it worked for are fairways.

Kris, James and Joe: Thanks a ton for the advice. I really appreciate it.

James, I went through those tables and checked all the varieties in that mix and they look like what I want. I'll definitely keep this thread updated as I start this process. Hopefully I'll be getting started next weekend with the RoundUp.

Two more questions:

1) Can anyone identify the grass in the last picture in my original post? That stuff is lush and green everywhere it shows up in my yard and is going strong despite me not watering lately.

2) We had a fallen tree removed from our front yard and the guy who did it thought he was doing us a favor by filling in the hole it left with "some dirt, no charge." (We weren't at home to stop him.) Well his "dirt" is almost all hard clay that is turning more and more rock-like every day. What should my approach be to loosen that stuff up and get it ready for grass seed?

Here are some pics of it:

From what I've read it sounds like I should dig out a couple inches and work some compost into the top few inches. Does that sound like it would work?

1 It's crab grass https://turf.purdue.edu/tool/

2 Don't think it would hurt, heck I would use that dirt for your holes.

And FyI your mower needs to be sharpened.

Ha. Of course I pick out the weed as the thing that looks best in my yard. Those pics were taken before I mowed. Just bought a new mower so hopefully I won't need to sharpen the blades until next spring.

O nice

Crabgrass is a grassy summer annual plant. People don't like it because it sends up shaggy looking seed heads, it only gets lime green, it has a coarse texture, it spreads quickly into thin spots easily, and it turns brown sooner than any other grass in the fall. Other than that, it's fine!

I would put the compost on top. A Logan Labs soil test would tell you if there is a salt imbalance that might help loosen the soil. Then there's the shampoo treatment (3 ounces per 1,000 square feet watered in). After that let the grass roots loosen the soil.

Would this power rake rental from Home Depot do the job I need of getting 1 inch down into the soil? Seems like kind of a puny machine: http://www6.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Power_Rake/TR-20HD/

Update #1

I know I haven't technically gotten into the "lawn care" part of my backyard makeover, but I figured I'd give y'all an update anyway. My attack plan is to build our paver patio first, then work on reseeding the lawn when it gets cooler in a month or so. Here's where things stand after my first weekend working on the yard. See my original post for a 'before' pic of the yard.

My goal for the weekend was a little too ambitious (especially considering it was 100 degrees here in Richmond this weekend): Take out the garden fence; cut down the garden plants; move the wood pile; remove the deck.

The garden fence was waaaaay overbuilt with each post buried 3-4 feet down with two feet of concrete at the bottom. I had planned on pulling them out but I ended up just cutting the posts off about 8 inches below grade.

The deck was similarly over built, with joists about every 10 inches. The guy used nails to build it instead of screws, which meant I have to cut on either side of each joist with a circular saw or else pry each board up. I'm about 2/3 done with the deck.

The wood pile was a beast. About 200 cu ft of wood. I built a new rack for it and stored it against the back fence. This was the most time consuming job of the weekend and the hottest. That stretch between the old location of the wood pile and the new is only in the shade at dawn and after 6pm.

We also got the two stumps ground on either side of the yard. They were ground to 8 inches below grade.

This week I'll be spraying RoundUp against the fence on the left for the new raised beds and building those beds. I'll be filling them with the soil I excavate for the patio where the deck used to be.

One quick question that didn't get answered above: Would this power rake rental from Home Depot do the trick for getting an inch into my soil to loosen everything up? It looks like the tines are loose and pivot on the central axel. Seems like I might need something with fixed tines. Any advice is appreciated.

Dethatchers/power rakes aren't meant to go that deep into the soil, just to scrape the surface.

@j4c11, I'm going off of what dchall said above (first comment in the thread) in his suggestion for how to rehab my yard:

Power rake to 1 inch deep and drag all the loose soil to fill the holes. Don't let the rake dig down into the ground deeper than 1 inch.

After seeing dchall's comment, I did some research and found some professional landscaping forums where people say they usually use a power rake instead of a tiller for light leveling, but it seems most of the time they're referring to heavier duty machines than what Home Depot rents. I just can't tell if that Home Depot rental is powerful enough to do what I need it to.

That one has flails, so I'm not sure it will work at all for your purposes. I own a similar machine but with solid tines. I don't even know if the tines will adjust to a depth of 1", but even if they did, I wouldn't use it to dig an area to 1" depth, they're just not meant to take that kind of abuse. Maybe if it was a rental I would care less.

DC's 2nd set of instructions was a typo. He originally stated "Power rake might be all you need. Set it to dig 1/4-inch deeper than the soil level and let it rip." I presume the /4 was left off inadvertently the 2nd time. Knowing dc is against tilling I imagine he would want to disturb as little as possible of your soil. BUt we can always wait for him to clarify.

1/4" would make perfect sense.

Running the flails at 1" below grade would produce a dust cloud of apocalyptic scale

Thanks for the advice, y'all. I'll keep posting updates as things progress.