This is the second time I've seen this this year. It was not 45 minutes, it was 4 to 5 minutes. Big difference, huh!? All you have to do is moisten the sod, not drench the soil 2 feet down. At this point you should probably not water until the grass looks dry. It's already knit into the underlying soil with all that moisture. Just let it go until you see the blades fold together. Then water it...for 45 minutes. Actually get some cat food or tuna cans and place them around the yard. Time how long it takes to fill those. Then water for that time next time you need water. It should be at least a week. The idea with watering mature grass is to do it deeply and infrequently. Deeply is 1 inch. Infrequently is once a month in the cool months changing gradually to once every week in the hottest heat of summer. You do have a fungal disease in the older grass. Those are disease lesions on the blades (excellent pictures, by the way). This is going to sound crazy, because it still sounds crazy to me, but down here people have good results simply washing disease spores down into the soil with soap. The microbes in the soil take care of the spores. The treatment is to spray with 3 ounces of baby shampoo or any clear shampoo. That is 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. This is the same treatment as for hard soil. Spray it now and make that the last time you water for several days. But watch it very carefully. If new grass shoots get the disease after you stop watering, then you'll have to treat it. If your soil was graded, that is the perfect preparation for new seed or sod. Rototilling is the worst thing you could do in prep for grass. I disagree with doing it for a veggie garden, too, but for different reasons. Definitely grade instead of rototill.

Yeah, some of the Chamaecyparis can get pretty ugly at the end of the year with the inner browning. I almost pulled my 'Fernspray Gold' from the yard the first year I had it. It was pretty ragged looking but my wife told me to keep it. I've had it 4 years now and It looks pretty cool for a golden, scragally, ferny thing. I actually like it a lot, just look somewhere else when it starts doing the inner browning thing. I also do what Mike does and knock off all the browning foliage to make it look presentable again. I guess mine looks pretty decent for growing in thick clay. Mike, I'll make my unqualified guess and say that your plant is either 'Filicoides' or 'Filicoides Compacta' if it is simply green and ferny. If it is ferny and gold then it is 'Fernspray Gold' and if it is ferny, gold, and has slightly more refined ferny foliage then I would say that it is 'Golden Fern', a sport found on 'Fernspray Gold' which I think was a sport found on 'Filicoides'. Tee hee. This post was edited by garen59 on Wed, Nov 12, 14 at 21:18

trim it up a bit and apply Bayer Tree and Shrub as directed on bottle. same issues here on cypress......it works.

need a pic of the whole.. i am thinking handling damage ... either in shipping from the wholesaler ... to the retailer ... to you taking them home.. and dragging them around the yard twice ... one thing about conifers... the result of damage.. can be many months later... especially with the down time of winter... in between ... pic of the whole .. i am looking for highly localized spots rather than a general overall decline ... as in where burly men yanked these things around .. them.. not you ... lol ... considering they have only been in place.. 3 months... it would be hard for me to jump to bugs or disease ... but then i dont garden in the bug capitol of the world.. FL .. lol ... ken