Are your thin and bare areas in shady parts of your garden? That's the only reason bermuda would be thin. Bermuda needs full sun all day. If you have a fence, building, tree, or shrub anywhere between the grass and the horizon, bermuda will suffer. Overseeding is a mistake. Your current turf is a sodded variety. You cannot buy seed for that variety. The seeded varieties have some problems with appearance. Of course you have weeds now so there is already a problem with appearance. If shade is the problem, then there is a fine bladed zoysia that looks like bermuda and grows well in the shade. It is called Shadow Turf and is available at Fanicks Nursery on Holmgren Road (off of WW White north of Rigsby). It's a little expensive, but it would work. A much less expensive idea is to put a piece of St Augustine sod in the shady areas. The problem with that is the St Aug is a very coarse bladed grass and will look weedy as it encroaches into the bermuda. In San Antonio the St Aug will take over the bermuda in full sun and shade. Bermuda grass is most dense (thick) when mowed low. If you have not already, lower your mower deck to the lowest setting and leave it there.

Also for watering: the soil looks too dry too soon currently. Mine, too--and I have no real problems. The very top surface of the soil dries out really fast in sun and wind, but that doesn't mean there isn't water underneath. You can test that by pushing a screwdriver into the soil. If it goes in fairly easily (barring rocks), your soil is damp. Or drive a small trowel into it and separate it into a V shape by rocking it a little bit. That'll give you a direct visual on how deep the water is. Here would be my plan: for now do very frequent waterings to help really wet the soil, I'm not familiar with California (except for the part about moderate temperatures and no rain), but this doesn't sound like a good idea--it encourages shallow roots and lawn diseases. The standard is 1" of water a week, all at once (well, within a day to allow for on/off cycles to allow the water to penetrate). For sandy soil your mileage will differ because the water wicks out fast and goes very deep very quickly. I will also probably try milorganite as a jump start, as I fear my soil is probably pretty depleted. I swear by it, others don't (it is processed sewage, but heated enough to kill everything in it). The 18 lbs/thousand square feet I put down last weekend kicked in and it's a rainy week. The grass, since Sunday, has grown one and a half inches and gone a deeper green. Once it stops raining, I'll mow. I went high, but I'm going to renovate this fall--with a deep, heavy core aeration I want lots of organics mixing into the holes. I alternate it with alfalfa and soy. When I started (early last year), my soil profile was slightly silty clay, poor drainage, very poor water penetration, hard as a rock, and a light tan. It had been corn field for as long as I could remember prior to building, and even my parents don't remember when it wasn't. Call it 40 years of abuse. Now it's still slightly silty clay (nothing's going to change that short of a renovation down to a foot or more). Drainage is fair to good, penetration is good to excellent, the soil is still hard when dry (it's supposed to be), but spongy when wet. The top half-inch is black, another inch is deep brown, and a good three inches below that have turned a midrange brown. Everything grows better and more strongly. I'm very pleased. Some older photos are here. I have to update them--the grass has improved since these were taken and the season advanced a bit.

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!

>>The fertilizer I used was 18-0-18 so do you think 10 pounds for 4000 sq ft was the correct amount? 10 pounds per 4K is 2.5 pounds per thousand. That's 0.45 pounds of nitrogen (and potassium, but that doesn't matter so much). It's on the low side. 5.5 pounds per thousand square feet, or 20-22 pounds on 4K, would be the amount to target 1 pound of nitrogen per thousand. For a feeding in the lull period, though, 0.45 pounds of N is fine. The grass isn't particularly demanding in mid to late October. When you winterize, plan to target 5 to 6 pounds per thousand square feet, though. That feeding goes directly into carbohydrate storage after processing. One thing. Potassium's pretty harmless, but there's no need to pay for it or use it if your potassium levels are good. If you're not sure, or if your soil test shows a good K level, purchase nitrogen fertilizers that have numbers like 29-0-5. They tend to be cheaper per pound and don't add things your soil doesn't require. However, even potassium overapplication isn't much of an issue until it gets extreme. A pound or two of potassium per thousand square feet per year isn't extreme. >>I'm going to try the soybean meal and cornmeal next Spring - what does it specifically do and what am I replacing by using it? (The cornmeal is good to help prevent fungus right?) Each organic has its advantages and disadvantages! Corn meal or cracked corn (I like cracked as it flows more easily, but my local grain mill's idea of corn meal is powder-fine) are a poor feeding of the lawn at 1.65-0.65-0.40, but help with fungal resistance for the season. Corn can be applied in fantastically high amounts as a soil conditioner without doing damage and without generating nearly as much stink as other things will (due to the low nitrogen levels). Corn was my go-to when I was adding organic material to the lawn. At the time, it was very cheap, and I regularly dropped 60 pounds per thousand. Soy is a fantastic feed at 7-2-1, but at the amounts used it's not as good a soil conditioner (it works as well, by weight, as corn, but you use a lot less weight). Application of 15 pounds per thousand square feet four times yearly will feed your lawn completely with no other feedings (except winterization, which is special) required. Soy has no other specific advantages, but since it's the heaviest hitter in terms of protein (which means nitrogen), it tends to be the primary feed used by organics people. Soy will replace the feedings you're currently doing if applied in early to mid May, August first, September first, and October first. Your late summer and fall dates may back up a little bit from mine as your climate is a bit colder. Southerners use cottonseed meal instead of soybean meal. Same difference. Alfalfa might be nice once per year in mid September at 10 pounds per thousand. If you wish. It contains growth hormones that will encourage the root density of the lawn to increase. Don't overdo alfalfa as too much in the way of growth hormones actually stops growth. Milorganite is a nice fill-in if your lawn's color is paler than you like. It has good nitrogen levels, some phosphorus, and at 4%, a ton of iron (iron is a minor element and not used in large amounts). Constant use can raise iron levels in the soil and even out the color so it's always the darkest green it can be for the season, weather, and watering levels. Most other things that you can get, like oat hulls, rice hulls, brewer's grains, and so on are comparable to corn in terms of nitrogen and good as soil conditioners if you can get them cheap. Used coffee grounds. These are comparable to corn, although they're exceptionally attractive to worms. Their advantage is that most Starbucks' and many other coffee shops save their spent, pressed grounds for people who want to use them in composting or soil conditioning. Call around and you can sometimes get loads of these for free. Compost is great, and a wonderful soil conditioner, but essentially does nothing to feed the lawn. Worms like it, and it also puts back bacterial and fungal species that have been wiped out by chemical use or flooding. It's not on my recommended list due to the weight, cost, and the fact that you can do all of this with other stuff--but there's an exception to that rule, which doesn't apply here.