I lived in the transition zone for 12 years, and struggled with fescue for 9 of those years. Then I moved to a house (in Richmond, VA) which had a fescue/bermuda mix. I know this goes against all lawn care wisdom, but it worked for me. I mowed it at about 3", and when it got hot, the bermuda filled in the bare patches in the fescue. I only reseeded in the fall once in 3 years and the fescue did great. It was an established yard, and if you want a mix, you may have to overseed fescue in the fall, since your spring crop may have severe damage. Now I am down south and have a bermuda lawn. I don't really like the dormant season (5-6 months here) but it is way too hot for fescue here unless you have some shade, which I don't. I say go for it...throw down some bermuda seed!

Hi John, thanks for responding. I did think initially that it was something to do with the hot weather, but I am still leaning towards the leaf spot / melting out. In one of the areas it started a month or so ago before the hot weather really kicked in. I did see some information about the possible alleopathic affects of PRG on other grasses, but I'm not really sure how that would impact the fine fescue that I have already or any new seed I might overseed with. It seems like a lot of store bought mixes include PRG along with KBG or fescues. If PRG was that bad I don't know why they would include it in the mixes. Then again I know store bought stuff is not always the best. Does anyone else have any thoughts on what would blend well into predominately fine fescue lawn?

Yeah, I have an Orbit timer setup with three different valves, each valve runs three sprinklers (I wish I had put in an underground sprinkler system, but oh well). I haven't measured how many inches yet, but I run each valve for 15 minutes (45 min total) each day, until it starts to runoff. Now I'm down to 15 minutes each valve every 3 days since it's only in the 90's now. It does take a lot of water, but it's well worth it and water is dirt cheap here...imagine that in the desert! (I only pay about $25/month for about 2500 cubic ft.). Soil is rock hard clay, no sand, you literally have to use a sharpened pick axe to dig it up. What I did to prepare was pick axe the whole dirt back yard (about 8" down), then mixed in a truck load of compost (about 30% compost). There were some areas where the grass grew great until the heat kicked in, so I dug those up last week and reseeded (I didn't dig down deep enough so the roots stopped growing). I water at 5am, and humidity is only like 10% usually, so yeah, no fungal disease worries here! In the peak of summer it gets down to the 80's only, now it gets down to 50's. We freeze overnight in Jan/Feb as well. I was amazed to see Tall Fescue growing here too (since it's cool season grass), but a lot of lawns here are fescue and that's pretty much all the stores carry. I use the generic Contractor's Mix from Lowes (which is one of the cheaper bags, but I've had great success with it), I'll have to check what cultivars are in the bag and report back.

Thanks for all the replies so far on this thread. Spruce: Somehow I knew you were going to recommend the Norway spruce! =) We have several mature NS on our property and they do well. The local farm market has several small potted (2 gallon?) NS trees on sale so I might check them out. smivies: Thanks for the ideas. We do have a couple of mature Douglas firs as well. They're fast growing for sure, but our particular specimens don't look all that great. Ours are not very dense, and you can see through them easily, so I neve really considered them as a possibility. We've never had any A. cephalonica so I'll ahve to do some research. Our white pines are quite drought tolerant but as you say, the soft wood makes for a poor windbreak. Our white pines, though beautiful, quite often drop branches during winds and storms. I'm growing several P. strobiformis from seed and they did very well this season (their first year). We'll see how they do this winter. The blue-green color is great! scotjute: Thanks for suggesting the Eastern Red Cedar. I'll take a look at that as well. We don'thave any of them so that might be interesting as well. Thanks again! We're open to suggestions =) Dave