I don't suggest using any products. If your grass is fairly dense then all you have to do is prevent weed seeds from sprouting. That is done with cultural practices as much as anything. Water deeply and infrequently. If you water like you were starting new seed, you will start new seed. You have to water more like once very 2 weeks during most of the year and, during the hottest part of summer, once per week. That allows the soil surface to dry out and prevents weed seeds from sprouting. It also develops deep, drought resistant roots. You have to water long enough (without runoff) to get the soil wet pretty deep to last a whole week but most of us can do that. If you live in pure sand soil and have humidity below 15% then you might need to water more often. Mow your grass at the highest setting. The tall grass shades the soil keep it cool but also preventing enough sunlight to hit weed seedlings if they happen to sprout. Seedlings need full sun to take root. Tall grass also develops deep roots. There have been reports here in this forum of people who follow the above suggestions and manage to have a perfect edge between their KBG or fescue lawn and the neighbor's full crabgrass lawn. You should be able to have a weed free lawn while living next to a weedy vacant lot.

A statement from the NWS regarding this summer in central NJ: ...WARMEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER ON RECORD AT TRENTON... ...FIFTH DRIEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER ON RECORD AT TRENTON... ...EIGHTH WARMEST AUGUST ON RECORD AT TRENTON... ...THIRD DRIEST AUGUST ON RECORD AT TRENTON... ...MOST DAYS IN A YEAR THAT REACHED OR EXCEEDED 90 DEGREES ON RECORD AT TRENTON... METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER (JUNE, JULY AND AUGUST), 2010 IS THE WARMEST SUMMER ON RECORD WITH AN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF 77.67 DEGREES. THE PREVIOUS WARMEST SUMMER ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1898, WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 76.47 DEGREES. ALSO, METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER, 2010 IS THE FIFTH DRIEST SUMMER ON RECORD WITH 5.90 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION. THE DRIEST SUMMER ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1966, WHEN 2.66 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION FELL. AUGUST, 2010 TIES AUGUST, 1900 FOR THE EIGHTH WARMEST AUGUST ON RECORD WITH AN AVERAGE TEMPERATURE OF 77.1 DEGREES. THE WARMEST AUGUST ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1895, WHEN THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE WAS 78.7 DEGREES. ALSO, AUGUST, 2010 IS THE THIRD DRIEST AUGUST ON RECORD WITH 0.80 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION. THE DRIEST AUGUST ON RECORD OCCURRED IN 1964, WHEN 0.47 INCHES OF PRECIPITATION FELL. FINALLY, THE TEMPERATURE THIS YEAR AT TRENTON HAS REACHED OR EXCEEDED 90 DEGREES ON 47 DAYS THROUGH AUGUST. THAT TIES 2010 WITH 1983 AS THE YEARS WITH THE MOST DAYS THAT HAVE REACHED OR EXCEEDED 90 DEGREES. THAT TIE WILL NOT LAST, BECAUSE THE TEMPERATURE AT TRENTON WILL EXCEED 90 DEGREES AGAIN TODAY. TEMPERATURE RECORDS DATE BACK TO 1893. PRECIPITATION RECORDS DATE BACK TO 1866. $$ THE TEN WARMEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMERS AT TRENTON DATING BACK TO 1893: RANK TEMPERATURE YEAR (DEGREES F) 1 77.67 2010 2 76.47 1898 3 76.27 1983 4 76.07 2005 5 75.97 1895 6 75.93 1896 6 75.93 1973 8 75.90 1966 9 75.83 1899 10 75.80 1893 THE TEN DRIEST METEOROLOGICAL SUMMERS AT TRENTON DATING BACK TO 1866: RANK PRECIPITATION YEAR (INCHES) 1 2.66 1966 2 3.80 1957 3 5.48 1913 4 5.53 1874 5 5.90 2010 6 6.80 1929 7 7.02 1925 8 7.09 1976 9 7.11 1949 10 7.22 1912 THE TEN WARMEST AUGUSTS AT TRENTON DATING BACK TO 1893: RANK TEMPERATURE YEAR (DEGREES F) 1 78.7 1895 2 78.2 ...

Dorothy, From watching how the jetstream, I think it has persistently come close enough to your end of Oklahoma that you get the gray, gloomy clouds on the edge of the cold fronts that are dropping snow and ice north of you. Way down here in southern OK we've had more sun than last year, but in the last week or so, the sun has become increasingly rare. Keith, You're welcome. I'm getting pretty concerned about y'all up there in central OK. This is the driest I remember seeing your part of the state in winter in several years. I understand exactly what you did and why. I'd probably do exactly the same thing if I was a dry as you are. When my soil gets so dry in drought periods that rainfall or sprinkler irrigation rolls downhill on the surface of the ground and isn't even absorbed, I know I've waited too late to start watering. I think it is always better, even (maybe especially) in winter to water the dry ground. If it gets too, too dry and planting time is approaching, it can be hard to keep the soil moist enough for seeds to sprout. The big mistake I made in one dry spring (may have been 2003 or 2005) is that I planted and watered sparingly waiting for rain to fall to give the seeds and plants more water. Well, rain never fell and by the time I realized that I should have been watering more heavily to get them off to a good start, the were pretty stunted and pathetic. It was a hard lesson to learn, but it made me a better gardener in succeeding dry years. Don't even mention those photos of those big old black clouds. They are fascinating but in a horrifying and very scarey type of way. I hope and pray we've learned enough about conservation and no-till commercial farming that we never put ourselves in that predicament again. Can you imagine the mass hysteria, especially on the part of the media with its 24-hour-news-cycle nowadays if we had something like that occurring? If you haven't read the book about the Dust Bowl days that I've linked below, I highly recommend it. I reread it once every 2 or 3 years to remind myself of how bad it was and what all those folks went through. We throw the word "diaster" and "catastophe" around pretty loosely nowadays, but those people who endured the Dust Bowl years really lived through a catastrophe and it lasted for years. Some of the old-timers here have told me stories about what it was like here in our county, and it wasn't pretty. One of them lived on land adjacent to ours and she tried to explain what it was like to have the big clouds of dust ruin the laundry you'd just washed, or blow through the cracks in walls, etc. into the house and cover everything with a fine layer of dust. She was a very small child then so I'm not sure how much she remembers directly and how much she remembers from hearing her folks talk about it later on their lives. I just can't imagine what it was like to endure 8 long years of catastrophe. My dad did tell me about the pure agony of watching crops fail over and over, which was a disaster for folks who essentially raised all their own food. So, if couldn't grow a crop, you couldn't eat. One thing that sticks in my memory from photos of those days is just how painfully thin everybody was. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: The Worst Hard Time

The following is an account of our experience with a company called "Offshore Pools" based in Brick, NJ. We hired them to install a large in ground pool about 8 years ago. Please see my review from about 9 months ago posted elsewhere(and see the update following the review)I will post pictures if possible: "We hired Offshore to build our higher-end pool. They acted like our best friends until they made the sale....after that we were just a number to them. Despite all the proper maintenance, within just a few months the liner began pulling out of the corners. They said it was "normal". We believe the liner was incorrectly installed. A stone "waterfall" from the hot tub section to the main pool developed leaks that caused excessive water loss. The outer wall tiles of the hot tub portion fell off. Worst of all, the concrete patio they constructed developed deep, full-thickness cracks requiring removal and re-pouring of an entire section (at our cost). Now, two other sections have also developed similar large cracks. Three years after they built the pool, the township called us and informed us that Offshore never obtained a permit and we were threatened with a fine. We had to call Offshore and demand that they remedy the situation. No explanation or apology was forthcoming. The last straw was calling them several times in the spring of 2011 to schedule repairs and an opening. No call-back. No response. No service. I will never give them my business again and would strongly recommend that others avoid this company as well. There are other, better pool companies out there. It just takes some research and face-to-face discussion with the owners to weed out the incompetent and the negligent ones. Good luck. See my other reviews for my recommendation." UPDATE 6/16/2012 We are currently in the process of having the concrete repaired by a more reliable pool company. When the new contractor removed the concrete poured by Offshore no reinforcing wire mesh to strengthen the material. As a result, according to our new contractor, the concrete developed horrendous full-thickness fractures and heaved so much that there are now areas where the concrete is cracked and lifted 2 or more inches and others where the concrete has sunken. In addition, the paver coping was found to have no significant concrete footing (see photo)and as a result the coping pavers became undermined and had absolutely no support and sunk down. The cement joints between the coping pavers separated and the pavers began to slant downward and then to sink. Thirdly, Offshore failed to construct or to even recommend a French drain that should have been placed in order to divert ground water away from the pool area. The current contractor tells us that such a drain would have likely prevented the above problems to a large degree. In summary, our current contractor told us that the structural problems we are experiencing are a direct result of the failure to use reinforcing wire mesh, failure to place a concrete footing under the coping and failure to construct(or to recommend)a French drain to divert ground water away from the pool area. As noted above, several prior attempts to get Offshore to respond to this situation were unsuccessful. Our calls were not returned. The repair to our pool is costing us $10,000. We would advise avoiding Offshore Pools at all costs.