Unfortunately you seem to have multiple counter productive jobs to perform. If your predominant job is to regrade and repair, then why spend $$$ on herbicide and fertilizer this spring/summer/fall if it's going to all go away in the fall? I like rdaystrom's suggestion of sod. That gives you the ability to really repair the lawn right (roundup, ammend, till, patch, supplement, adjust sprinklers, ect...) and then get a decent looking lawn this late spring / early summer. If sod doesn't float your boat, then I'd still perform the lawn repair and then gear up for a spring reseed. I performed one last year (search on username), and it's not for the faint of heart. Even Tupersan'ing and Drive 75'ing the lawn on a regular basis, I still had TON'S of weeds. It finally looked decent come September/October, but July? >. Dave

If you seed in the spring, you'll probably lose some of the grass during the heat of the summer. Fall is the best time to seed since it gives the grass more time to establish before the heat of summer. I don't know how long you need to wait after applying the weed killer etc, but the label should tell you that.

Asking a bunch of lawn wackos whether you should hire somebody to take care of your lawn is probably not going to get a lot of endorsements for the lawn service. I used a lawn service for the first year I owned my house and my thinking was much along the same lines as yours. I'd get a professional service to get rid of the weeds and get my grass healthy and after that, I'd be able to do it on my own. I think they said that they used a specific set of chemicals that they sprayed that was tailored to my lawn and its needs, but the truck that they brought around had a big tank on it and they used the same tank on every lawn. When they would come by, they'd leave a notice on the door with recommendations for how often to cut, water, etc based on the conditions they noted in my lawn. But it was the same every time, regardless of the temperature, rainfall, etc. To top it off, the weed situation was no better than before and may have even gotten worse. I also wasn't really comfortable with the little flags they'd put out telling me to keep children and pets off the lawn for a minimum of X days because of the treatments. So I took matters into my own hands. I read things from the extension offices and started doing things that are pretty close to what gets recommended around here. Things started improving. Then I found various lawncare forums and things got even better. One humorous (or maddening?) thing happened a few years after I stopped using the lawn care service. A sprinkler head broke and a section of the lawn went dormant because it wasn't getting any water (the only water lawns get here is from sprinklers). One of the lawncare services pulled up and told me that I had a serious grub problem and needed to treat it right away. They went out to the area that was dormant and started pulling up sections of grass and telling me that it was due to grubs. I knew it was because of lack of water and suggested that as the cause, and they started launching into an explanation of why they knew that wasn't it. I then turned on the sprinkler in that section and showed them that it wasn't working, but they still tried to tell me it was grubs. Anyway, the main things you want to do are the following: Water deeply and infrequently. Apply an inch of water a week, but only water once a week if you can (in the desert, I often have to water twice a week, or once every 5 days, anyway). Adjust the amount (or the frequency) you water for any rainfall. This has a couple of benefits. First, it promotes deep roots, so the grass can better deal with periods of drought. I call grass a lazy plant, because it will only put down roots as deeply as it needs to for the water it gets. If the top inch of soil is always wet, the grass will have roots that are only an inch deep. Second, letting the ground dry between waterings will discourage weed seeds from germinating, because they need moisture to germinate. Mulch mow and mow at the highest setting of your mower and never cut more than 1/3 of the blade at one time. Mulch mowing returns water and nutrients to the soil and improves the health of the soil. It doesn't contribute to thatch and can actually contribute to getting rid of it. Mowing at the highest setting helps to make the grass stronger because it gives more surface area for photosynthesis. It also helps shade the surface so the roots are better able to deal with heat and drought. Also, it helps keep weeds from thriving because the weeds need sunlight. Fertilize once in the spring and twice in the fall. If you're using weed killers, don't use the weed and feed products (another reason I don't like the services--the one size fits all means they fertilize and kill weeds at the same time). Instead, spot spray weeds that you see sprout up. As for the lime, did they do a soil test? If not, there's no way to know whether lime is needed. Some areas tend to have low pH soils, but you don't know what the prior owner did. The prior owner may have applied lime regularly and heavily and raised the pH too high. If so, I wouldn't do anything to lower the pH because that will happen anyway, but you need to know if it needs lime before adding it. I guess my comment on the grubs is similar. Do you have grubs? If not, the grub treatment makes a lot more sense for the lawn service than it does for you.

Thank you for writing before you did anything. These comments will save you a lot of time. Don't use corn gluten meal on established crabgrass. It will only fertilize it. As was said, corn gluten meal is only recognized as a PRE-EMERGENT weed seed controller. If you want to use a pre emergent, then use it in the spring when you are not reseeding. Crabgrass will die by itself. You don't have to do anything. If you want to over seed or reseed, and if you have crabgrass you probably do, then you should get rid of the established crabgrass before seeding. I would probably use a power rake and take it all the way down to the soil. Then reseed. Be careful with the power rake around your sprinklers. Put flags up or something to warn you where they are. Also DO NOT bring in any new soil unless you have low spots you want to raise. Chances are your soil is already higher than the surrounding concrete which indicates you do not need to add more. Having that much crabgrass in the lawn indicates several things. First of all your grass is not dense enough to shade out the crabgrass. Crabgrass can only survive in full sun. If you have dense, tall grass, it will never get started. The other thing it indicates is that you are getting water too frequently. If you are watering more often than once a week, that is too frequent. Crabgrass seed needs frequent watering to germinate. So with this in mind, first of all you need to seed in as much grass as it takes to cover the lawn completely. Kentucky bluegrass is great because it seldom needs to be reseeded. It spreads to fill in bare spots. After you get the grass established, make sure you don't water too often. This means you'll have to water deeper (longer) each time you water. Then reset your mower to the highest setting. Tall grass will look much better and will keep out almost all the weeds.