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"   &amp;amp;gt; Once it&amp;#039;s started on improved soil, grass needs very little care to look crisp, green, cool and inviting. Broadleaf Plantain: Weeds invade when the lawn itself isn&amp;#039;t healthy. Killing the weeds without healing the lawn means you&amp;#039;re only treating the symptoms. Face Reality The first step is admitting your lawn has a problem. lots of them, actually: weeds, bare spots, thatch. People are talking. But are you ready to embrace the treatment?  I&amp;#039;m one of those grass guys. You probably know the type. House surrounded by a shag carpet so deeply green it verges on blue. Not a weed in sight. There&amp;#039;s a grass guy or two in every neighborhood. In mine, they call me &amp;quot;the grass whisperer.&amp;quot;  Looking at my lawn, you&amp;#039;d think I toil relentlessly from April clear through to Thanksgiving, or pay a small fortune to a lawn service. The truth is, I don&amp;#039;t do either. Except for a weekly mowing, a few squirts of weed killer now and then and a well-timed hit of fertilizer every autumn, I do little more than accept compliments from passersby. I don&amp;#039;t constantly water, overfeed, aerate, douse with 2,4-D, degrub, defungus or dethatch. If I do have a problem with my turf, it&amp;#039;s that mowing is sometimes difficult because of how dense the grass grows. I know, I know: Shut up.  To own a good-looking lawn that&amp;#039;s practically on autopilot is a dream widely held. The reality is that getting to that point requires hefty machinery, callus-inducing labor and an enhanced understanding of your lawn as a miniature ecosystem. Take it from me, it&amp;#039;s worth it.  Four years ago the front yard of my new home was an unsightly mess. Aboveground there was an assortment of aggressive weeds. Below ground, the soil was compacted by heavy construction equipment and depleted of vital nutrients. Rather than launch a multiyear campaign to coax life out of the few remaining blades of grass, I instead hit the &amp;quot;restart&amp;quot; button and killed my old lawn.   &amp;amp;gt;Solarization, Stage One: The first stage of solarization kills everything but a few hardy survivors here and there. Yank these weeds or grass sprigs by hand. If a shrink-wrapped lawn isn&amp;#039;t for you, two applications of a herbicide like Roundup spaced two weeks apart will also work.Solarization, Stage Two: Roll up plastic and set it aside. Till the lawn under, adding amendments if necessary, then rake and roll the lawn to smooth and gently compact it. Complete the kill by putting the plastic down for a second time. Lawn Forensics You know something is killing your lawn. But what? Science has the answer, and the odds are good that the culprit is depleted and unhealthy soil.  On a cool morning in early August, in the midst of one of the wettest summers in memory, our lawn redo project got underway. Not with the clatter of machinery or clank of garden rakes hitting pay dirt\u2014plenty of both would follow soon enough\u2014but with me lifting small scoops of soil from the Aires&amp;#039; front lawn. These I sent off for analysis at the agricultural extension service at Penn State University.  Before planting a new lawn, it&amp;#039;s vital to understand why the old one failed. A modestly priced soil analysis (pay extra to test levels of organic matter) is your best forensic clue. &amp;quot;Was the soil low in nutrients, too acidic, did tree limbs overgrow and create too much shade, was there too much foot compaction?&amp;quot; asks Dennis Martin, a turfgrass specialist at Oklahoma State University. &amp;quot;Without modifying those conditions, a lawn renovation doesn&amp;#039;t solve your problems.&amp;quot;  Just as in painting a house, almost all the hard work in replanting a lawn lies in the preparation. But it is also crucial to schedule the job properly. The process begins by pinpointing the sweet spot on the calendar for seeding in your area, then working backward. In the cool-season grass zone, which I inhabit (generally north of a line drawn between San Francisco and Philadelphia), seed should be in the ground between the last week of August and the first two weeks of September. In the transition zone (the area between a line drawn from San Diego to Myrtle Beach, S.C., and south of the boundary described above), seed should be sown in mid- to late September. Warm-season grasses are another beast altogether. In the arc from south Texas to Florida, seed or plugs go down in late spring to early summer.  Why plant cool-season grass types like bluegrass and fescue late in the growing season? Turf scientists advise it because competition from weeds will be nil, you won&amp;#039;t have to spend as much time watering, and grass naturally devotes its energy at that time of year toward building all-important root structure. For warm-season grasses like zoysia and Bermuda grass, seeding needs to happen when the grasses are in their active growth phase, which comes before the summer heat arrives in full.   Figuring that the active phase of our lawn renovation\u2014from killing off the old lawn to putting seed in the ground\u2014would gobble up at least four weeks&amp;#039; time, I knew we had to have all of our supplies and equipment on hand and be ready to go by early August.  A key decision in the planning process is selecting the right type of grass to grow. In this, your state cooperative extension service&amp;#039;s website is an excellent resource. There you&amp;#039;ll find the results of field trials of specific cultivars under growing conditions that closely approximate yours. For instance, Penn State University&amp;#039;s cooperative extension details the performance of Tomahawk RT and 67 other tall fescues and 103 bluegrasses. For even more timely results on the very latest seed varieties, go to the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program&amp;#039;s website (ntep.org) and scan the results of turf trials from 30 locations around the country.  For the Aires&amp;#039; lawn, same as mine, we chose a mix of turf-type tall fescues. Deep-rooted, heat-tolerant and slow-growing up top, tall fescues require less watering and mowing than Kentucky bluegrass. They also demand less fertilizer and aren&amp;#039;t prone to thatch buildup. Perfect, in other words, for a low-maintenance lawn in southeast Pennsylvania. Fescues falter the farther north you live, where Kentucky bluegrass thrives.  To purchase elite performance seed varieties suited to your particular climate and soil type, you&amp;#039;ll probably need to look beyond local nurseries and big-box home centers, where one-size-fits-all mixtures are the rule. Web-based Seed\u00ADSuperStore and Seedland offer many of the best varieties singly and in blends. Turf experts like Landschoot and Martin advise planting no fewer than four or five varieties of a particular type of grass (e.g. Kentucky bluegrass) to avoid mass die-off caused by disease or weather extremes.   &amp;amp;gt;At Last, Grass Seed: After enduring comments and questions from neighbors, it feels good to spread seed. Do less visible areas first to perfect an even spread pattern. Twenty seeds per square inch is ideal coverage.Cover Up: Cover the seeded area with hay (dried grass) or straw (dried grain stalks). Either works as mulch but must be certified from a state agricultural department or other organization to be free of weed seed. Keep the lawn moist for the first three weeks, applying extra water if conditions are especially hot or windy. Avoid forming puddles. Die, Lawn, Die Now it&amp;#039;s time to get medieval on your sorry excuse for a lawn. a nice dousing of roundup will do the trick. So will plastic sheet and liberal applications of sunlight.  If you ever want to get a rise out of the neighbors, wrap your front yard in plastic. That&amp;#039;s what we did when it came time to kill off the Aires&amp;#039; old lawn. As I unrolled plastic sheeting under a blazing summer sun, dog walkers paused and landscape contractors drove by at a crawl. Normally, I&amp;#039;d terminate a lawn with two sprayings of a broad-spectrum weed and grass killer such as Roundup, spaced two weeks apart. The first spraying kills most of the lawn. The followup application catches any survivors. Then you wait at least 10 days from that last shot of Roundup before planting seed.  Kevin and Karlyn Aires, being organic gardeners, weren&amp;#039;t having any part of Roundup. (I did my best to explain that Roundup is actually quite environmentally friendly, but they didn&amp;#039;t see it that way.) Without that chemical cudgel, our best weapon was solarization, by which the lawn and any weed seeds lurking in the soil are steam-heated into oblivion after one month beneath a layer of clear plastic. Done correctly, solarization sterilizes the top 6 inches of soil by raising temperatures above 140 degrees Fahrenheit. We weren&amp;#039;t so lucky.  It took 17 man-hours of labor to cover the 1500-square-foot lawn in plastic and seal it tight at the edges with excavated soil. Then the rains returned and the clouds lingered. The maximum temperature we achieved was 105 degrees, just enough to kill the existing grass, but not hot enough to force dormant weed seeds to germinate and die off. Our plan was also hampered by the fact that the 3-mm plastic we purchased\u2014described as &amp;quot;clear&amp;quot; on the label\u2014was actually closer to white. And that meant that even when the sun did shine, those rays tended to reflect off the sheet rather than baking the soil underneath. Final analysis: Solarization is not worth the effort unless you&amp;#039;re a die-hard environmentalist, or you like attention. &amp;quot;It was great fun giving passing neighbors something new to talk about,&amp;quot; Kevin says in retrospect.  How you go about handling the next stage of a lawn renovation\u2014preparing the soil for seeding\u2014will depend on the results of your soil test. If the test shows your soil is in good shape and needs no amendments, then consider yourself lucky. You can quickly prepare a seedbed employing the same method used at Penn State&amp;#039;s turf research farm. Chew the lawn up by making eight to 10 passes with a rented core aerator. Apply seed-starter fertilizer as necessary. Then break up the plugs and furrow the lawn with a vertical mower, also known as a dethatcher. Make two to four passes in a crisscross pattern to kick up more dirt for better seed contact.  Better-quality dethatchers also function as slit seeders, laying down seed in a narrow furrow. If your machine has that capability, now&amp;#039;s the time to make use of it. Otherwise, broadcast seed using a lawn spreader. On my neighbors&amp;#039; lawn, because of dips and bumps that needed leveling, we instead rented a 6-hp rototiller to loosen the soil. A rototiller has the advantage of thoroughly mixing lime, fertilizer and any other amendment into the top 6 inches of soil. The disadvantage is it leaves plenty of rake work in its wake. Ideally, one should use a sod cutter to remove the layer of dead grass and weeds before tilling. Clumps of dead vegetation made raking and grading much more difficult.  It&amp;#039;s necessary to pack down a lawn that&amp;#039;s been rototilled. Rake it smooth, then use a lawn roller. You want to be able to step on the soil when it&amp;#039;s dry and not sink in. In our case, we put the plastic down a second time and seeded after we removed the plastic. If you&amp;#039;re not solarizing, spread seed, then drag a metal leaf rake across the lawn in several passes at right angles to mix dirt and seed. Spread by hand a mulching layer of straw that&amp;#039;s certified to contain no weed seeds. &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t put on too much. You want to see a little of the soil through the mulch,&amp;quot; Landschoot says. We used salt hay, a weed- and seed-free mulch available in the Northeast. Mulch prevents seed from washing away in a heavy rain, retains soil moisture and shields seedlings from blazing sun. Now, pass over the lawn with the lawn roller filled partially with water to establish good contact between seeds and soil.  The rest of the operation involves daily to twice-daily watering to keep the topmost layer of soil moist. We experienced every grass guy&amp;#039;s worst nightmare the night after planting: an unexpected torrential rainfall. In the deluge, seed migrated into clumps, leaving some areas bare. But after the seeds germinated, we simply reseeded the bald spots.  By late fall the lawn was thick, green and uniform. Come summer, it will be ready for heavy traffic. And then the Aires will learn that, with the hard work over, they can best appreciate their new lawn the way I do mine: watching it grow from the comfort of a lawn chair. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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