Dear Rae E, Thank you very much for your inquiry. Tall fescue can be a wonderful lawn grass, especially in the transition zone. There could be several problems going on here that are promoting your issues. First, keep the mowing height at 3-4 inches and mow every 5-6 days. Second, fertilize with a turf specific fertilizers, 4-5 times per year, with a target of 4 lbs N/1000 ft2/year (this can decrease after a couple of years once the turf is mature). Make sure you always put down starter fertilizer with the seed. The corn gluten meal for weed control is not effective on many broadleaf weeds. For this, use triclopyr. You can knock the weed back now, but target early October as well for an application. Again, thanks for the question and let me know if you have more. Respectfully Trey Rogers, The Briggs & Stratton Yard Doctor, YardDoctor.com

I suspect that's too much shade under the trees. Bermuda will not be the best for that spot. Ideally you would have seeded the bermuda in mid June to have the warmest conditions, but this year was not cooperating with the rain and overcast. Still you should have fit it in in the heat of summer for best results. That is crazy about the tree. Is the tree on her property or yours or smack in the middle? Are you renting or do you own the property? I would suggest taking down the chain link at this point, but don't waste the money if you're renting. It is amazing how much difference the deep and infrequent watering process makes. Also if you have not fertilized recently, you might try organic. I use alfalfa pellets or corn meal from Ful-o-Pep on Roland east of WW White. 50 pounds should be under $15 or $10. Application rate is 15 pounds per 1,000 square feet, and it takes 21 days to see the results. With this cold front it might take a few days longer if you were to put it down this weekend. If you buy it now and don't use it all, go ahead and use it all anyway. You cannot hurt anything by overdoing these products. If you leave it in the garage over the winter it will be buggy in the spring. It's still fine to use, but just a little icky. So next April is the time to evaluate what you want to do with the back yard. I think it could be too shady for bermuda. If it seems slow to awaken and turns thin, then shade is the problem. The best place to get St Augustine is Milberger's Nursery at 1604 and Bulverde Rd inside the loop. They sell 14 pallets of St Aug every day, so it's always fresh. Lowe's and HD sell 1-2 pallets per week, and it always looks diseased. Milberger's is also about 1/3 the price of Lowe's.

Also in Chesterfield - Those pics you posted are exactly what my lawn looked like last year. I too have lawn service (VA Green) and spend TONS of time and effort. So when it was all perfect one minute then that, i was upset. Turned out to be fungal. Virginia Green upsold me on the "Estate" package that treats fungus. Two weeks later, the brown areas were gone and it was back to perfect. Now this year since i have that higher package, I dont have to worry about it coming back. And with 2 acres of just grass ... It looks great! The point of this post was to recommend VA Green over True Green which i've seen terrible things from here. Also to sucker you in to subscribing to their fungal package like me so I'm not the only one ha. The below pic was covered in brown last summer, just everywhere. Now its this after just 2 fungal treatments.

i think a big part of it is that Fine Fescue needs less (about half if not more) fertilizer than TTTF. With these yards having fertilizings skipped very often, or not fertilzied in years, but yes clippings are mulched as fertilizer, just might be all the fertilizer the Fine Fescue needed, but the TTTF died out from lack of fertilizer. Besides that though I am extremely impressed by the full sun, no irrigation tolerance Fine Fescue has shown, I'm not sure if it's chewings, hard, crepping red, etc fine fescue but leads me to think it's one of the spreading/creeping verities because of the thickness it created. So don't overlook Fine Fescue in full sun,,, although it can be killed by too much synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (possibly even by standard application rates of companies like true green and scotts), and some might not like the look of it, and it does rip out quite easily compared to other more foot traffic tolerant grasses like KBG and TTTF, but it's a tough frkn grass I wouldn't count out.