Well, here is my two cents and you can decide if it is good news or bad news on your own. ;) I too have put down a little P Rye only to discover its early aggressive growth does just what you suggest, it will take over much more than its "percentage" would indicate to the average yard guy (or gal). The good news is that Brian suggested above, it is a beautiful yard from now to next summer. Really, you can hardly beat it for that time period. The problem is it will then brown out in most places in the heat and look pretty bad until cool weather returns. My experience is it takes it two or three summers to die out on its own to the point where you can get something else established. Soo, you can take the good and live with the bad and overseed with P Rye every fall, or roundup it sooner or later and start over. Personally, I'd take the lazy man approach and wait to next fall to make a decision.

Just a question, but do you know what's in the contractor's mix? There is nothing wrong with fescues - they are extremely common in most cool season turf grass blends and have much higher cold and shade tolerance than either blue or rye grass. And any grass seed mixture that purports to be 100% weed-free is yanking your chain - it is virtually impossible to remove ALL potential weed seeds and even premium turf grass seed blends will admit to some weed seeds but typically less than 1% of the mix.

Thank you everyone!!!! Hey while we are on the subject of weed killer, anyone have any luck and can recommend a backpack sprayer that does not leak? I bought a "Solo" one from home depot, but that is not saying much. What a piece of junk! My back is soaked when I am done using it. I never understood why they engineered these to feed from the bottom with all of the connections. What about marking ink, anyone use that? It looks expensive.

In short, YES!!! I HATE pulling weeds so put down weed barrier cloth. It has helped TREMENDOUSLY in not having to pull weeds. The occasional weed may sprout but since the weed barrier prevents them from sinking their roots down into the soil those that do pop up are much easier to remove. The soil here has a lot of clay so after removing the weeds, I amended it with pumice. I then got a rough idea of where I wanted the plants to go and laid down the cloth. I cut X’s in the cloth where the plants would go and stuck them in the dirt. Once everything was planted I then covered the cloth with rocks. I think that was about 2 years ago and the plants have grown quite well. I’m glad I went to the extra expense and time of putting down the weed barrier. I haven’t regretted it.