Attempting to add pictures now.

Can't seem to get them to actually load and instead they are remaining grayed out.

Thanks for the thoughful response, dchall.

This is an enormous undertaking, so I'm not in a rush. Your advice gives me things to work on now while I try and sort of a good plan.

Can get a soil test done for sure, but it's the same stuff I had across town- lots of rocks and VERY sticky/rubbery when wet.

I'm curious about the swale. I certainly couldn't do it myself. The house fortunately is in no danger of flooding. The lot is graded so all the water collects in the yard, but not near the house.

The bad news is that the yard is lower than the curb/street.

In other words, water runs away from the house but also away from the street. It just collects right in the middle where there should* be nice grass.

I also have read lightly about french drains. I'm not sure that is substantial enough a solution, but I couldn't say for certain.

I'm also a little concerned that I will need to have the entire yard re-graded. That seems like a very high cost problem to have.

"You might not have any clay at all (95% chance), or it might be clay (5%). Usually tight soil is caused by salts that bind the soil as if it was clay."

Gonna disagree with that statement!! Clay is only defined by the particle size of the mineral elements that comprise the soil texture. It is one of the three textural, mineral based components of a soil, the other two being sand or silt. Very few soils - like almost none - are 100% of any of those three elements. Unless you are gardening directly on the beach or at the bottom of a river :-) Nearly all soils will be a mixture of various percentages of all three soil types and if in the right combination, they make up loam (40% silt, 40% sand, 20% clay). It would be extremely unusual to find any garden soil that did not have some percentage of clay - virtually ALL soils do!! And it would require at least 40% clay to be considered a clay based soil. But clay soils are way more common than dschall would have you believe!! Clay in at least some percentage is pretty much everywhere.

Salts may or may not be present, depending on location and aridity. So do not necessarily look to them to be a defining factor. And it is extremely easy to do a textural test to determine the percentage of the soil elements in your garden. That way you can know for sure what sort of soil you have and amend accordingly.

How do you even begin to amend soil in a half acre lawn?

I just mix in amendments for plant beds but can't imagine trying to do that myself for an entire yard.

"How do you even begin to amend soil in a half acre lawn?"

Ideally, before the lawn (or anything else) gets planted :-) After the fact, it would be applications of organic matter lightly over the lawn surface and aeration to open the soil profile to both air and penentration of the OM down into the soil. Obviously that is a much more lengthy process that takes place over the course of a number of years.

Or you can scrape and regrade and add a layer of imported soil with a better percentage of mix.

thanks gg, that is what I was afraid of!

Now that we are getting "normal" rain instead of the absolute deluge of late winter, I can see that the soil is draining OK after all.

And now that the sun has been out more, I'm not sure shade is the biggest issue.

Looks like water collection during heavy rain is an issue in a couple spots of the yard, but mostly the fallen tree branches and leaves have not been removed for YEARS. And that has probably smothered everything.

I don't have the money or time to invest into the lawn this year, so I lightly tilled the biggest problem areas and spread milorganite the day before a rain.

I'll probably do it again this summer and prep for seeding this fall.

I might have wasted 30min and $15, but we will see.