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.

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.

Sounds like the blade installation might be the trick, especially given the unevenness mentioned. I flipped the blade on a Husqvarna I sued at our last house for detail mowing and had some similar results. On the general topic, I've had good success with mulch mowing over the years. But our present property is reasonably large (over 3 acres). Since it takes about 3.5 hours on the tractor to do the basic mowing (not to mention more time for detailed push mowing, string trimming and edging...yeesh) it isn't practical to mow it more than once a week in total, maybe hitting the longer areas twice a week if time allows. So I have run into occasions where the amount of grass laying after mowing is unacceptable (and unhealthy!). And yes, I do try to avoid cutting more than one-third of the blade height. In those cases, I use a lawn sweeper to pick up the clippings and use them in a rather large compost area I have going. The sweeper (I got Craftsman's version of the Agri-Fab Smart-Sweep) was about a third of the cost of the JD power bagger for my tractor, and is simple, easy and quick to use. It also leaves a gorgeous striping effect which I enjoy. There are plenty of small push-type lawn sweepers available that you might consider after checking into the blade situation and other suggestions received here. I like the idea of returning those nutrients to the soil as much as possible, but also recognize the realities of mowing, especially during a relative wet spell that we've had in the east this year so far. I've used the sweeper probably every other mowing until this week when the rainfall was more moderate and the grass simply hasn't grown as much. My 80% fescue lawn looks great and healthy. Mowing long (3.5 inches), proper fertilizing after a soil test, judicious use of Weed-B-Gone, mulch mowing and occasional sweeping have really done the trick for my 3 year old lawn. Oh, that, and relatively moderate weather the last two years!

What I read about pendamethalin says it should be safe after about 7 days, the other, Vessie, contains products that are purported to be safe when dry although I would not allow children to play on grass so treated for 7 days as well since most organic sources recommend not using grass clippings from such lawns in a compost pile for at least two cuttings. If the owner of the at fault "lawn care" company does not offer to pay your natural lawn care company for tat least the rest of the summer there is very little you can do since the mind set for most people today is that those products are generally recognized as safe even though we know they are not. The play structure can be hosed down several times to wash off any of the product that may have attached to it. kimmq is kimmsr