Question
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Followup To Question -

what part of the country do you live in?  I live in Maryland

What kinds of grass do most people have in your area?  I have Tall Fescue

What kind of soil do you have? Thin layer of soil then it looks sandy with a light colored muddy look to it.

Do you have bird feeders in your yard?  NO feeders of any kind

What kinds of fertilizer, weed killers etc have you put down?  Last year I used Scotts Turf Builder and nothing this year.


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Followup To
Question -
My front yard is besieged with weeds and dry spots throughout.  Last year it was at least greenish but this year bald spots and weeds are the scourge of the day.  I'm not a great gardner or landscape guy but willing to dig in if I can save my front lawn.  This epidemic is slowly spreading to my back yard too.

How do I fix my lawn so it has some sembalance of lush, green grass and rid myself of the bald spots and weeds?
Answer -
Never worry, never fear, Granny Charlotte will soon be here.
Need some more information, then I'll bet I can help you fix that lil lawn up real good. I had nothing but clay and weeds, when we bought this house. Now I have a lush lawn, and garden, and good top soil about 12 inches or more deep.
I made all that dirt myself.
what part of the country do you live in?
What kinds of grass do most people have in your area?
What kind of soil do you have?
Do you have bird feeders in your yard?
What kinds of fertilizer, weed killers etc have you put down?
How much sunlight does your lawn get?
Why I asked about bird feeders. If you put out bird seed with black sunflower seeds in it, when the hulls from the seeds, that the birds spit out, accumulate on the ground, they can kill out all vegetation. The hulls have a toxin in them that is lethal to all vegetation.
The type of soil you have is most inportant. Clay soil will not let water to the roots, it doesn't soak in. Too sandy soil lets the water drain too fast, and the roots do not get enough water to survive.
I live in the dallas/Ft. worth area, and most lawns have St. Augustine or Burmuda.
Both of these grasses spread by runners, and you can plug them in and keep them watered and mowed short, and they will spread like crazy.
I don't like grass seed. Every time I have tried to seed a lawn, the #%#%& birds eat most of the seeds.
If you have bird feeders, and the ground has been poisoned by sunflower seeds, you will have to replace the dirt. It takes years for that toxin to leech out.
If you have clay or too much sand, you need to balance out the soil.
Clay:
Put some bags of Landscaper's or Planter's mix down and till it all in together, or make your own, by putting a ratio of 1 bag peat moss, 1 bag humus, and 2 bags of bark mulch (the small, not the chunky decorative kind) to 1 part soil.If the soil is a really hard clay, double the amount of bark mulch. I like to make my own when I am trying to improve a large area, because the bark mulch is cheaper than the other two, and it does more to loosen up the soil faster.
If the soil is too sandy, you will need to get a couple loads of good loam, and till that in with all that sand. You need to get a good balance for proper drainage.
I don't use fertilizer anymore. I went organic about 10 years ago, and I have a better lawn and garden, and do less work, and spend less money that when I was using chemicals.
For weeds, I put sugar on my lawn, in the spring and again in the fall.
Fertilizers kill beneficial microbes that enrich the soil. Sugar keeps them alive.
Weeds love poor soil. They will sometimes come up in rich soil, but they will not thrive, and after a few mowings, you will just not see them anymore.
Dry molasses is what is recommended, but when I first heard about this, the nurseries in my area didn't carry dry molasses, and the article said you could use sugar. I used the dry molasses a couple of times, when it became available, but find the sugar works as well, and I can pick it up when I do my grocery shopping, and don't have to make a special trip to the nursery. The smaller bags are easier for me to handle too.
The first couple of years after I started using the sugar, the weeds would come up, but we would just mow, and after a couple of weeks, we saw no weeds. Since then, the weeds don't even come up in the spring.
I haven't pulled a weed since I started with the sugar.
weed killers attract cats, and I didn't want to poison little cats that walked across my yard, so I dug the weeds out with an asparagus cutter. Hard on the knees and back!!!
The weeds I was dealing with were, crabgrass, johnson grass, dandelions, chickweed, clover, and some I was never able to identify.
If you are too leery to go without any fertilizer yet, put down all the stuff to till in with the soil put your fertilizer on top of that, broadcast sugar , then till it all in together.
When you put down fertilizer, and then put down sugar and water it in together, the sugar keeps the microbes from being killed, and you in fact, maximize the feeding benefits.
If you are going to till it all up, and start over, which is what I would do, why not put it all down, and just have to till once?
Then put the grass down, and water the dickens out of it.
Keep it moist, not real wet, for the first fw weeks, so the root system will take off.
If you plug in st.Augustine, keep it really wet. St. augustine will live in a swamp.
When we plugged in the St. augustine in our yard, we got all the plugs down, wett the yard like a swamp, and let the kids go barefoot, and squish the plugs into the dirt. In about 2 months, our yard was covered.
You can put small plugs, or buy the pallets, and cut them in several pieces, or in half, lay them so there is about 2 inches between them. You might save a few wheelbarrels of the tilled soil, to fill in between the plugs.
You can cover the plugs with soil, just so some blades are sticking above ground.
the reason for squishing it into the soil, is to get soil on top of the roots. that makes the spread faster.
when the grass starts to get new growth, let it grow to about 3 or 4 inches high, then mow, at your lowest mower setting. If you can set it at 2 inches, that would be great. Mow it again when it has about 1 inch growth. The more you mow it, the more the roots grow,
When you water, water to a depth of at least 6 inches.
Deep watering encourages roots to go deep to get water. the deep root system helps protect from heat and cold damage.
Shallow watering makes the roots come to the surface to get water, and heat and cold will kill them out.
I think we better stop before I confuse you beyond repair.LOL
Please look at the questions, and if any of those apply, write me again, and we will go to specific problems.OK?
Hope I have not confused you too much.
There is so much area to cover, and I may have not kept my thoughts as straight as I should. I get excited when I am talking about organic gardening. I think of all the back breaking work I did, for so many years, and struggled to have a mediocre lawn, and now it is so easy, and it looks so great!!!
I let my lil toads, grass snakes and lizards keep the nasty bugs off my plants. They do a much better job than the chemicals ever did.
I want every one if the whole world, to have a lush green yard o sit in and sip tea (or whatever you like to sip.LOL)

5/21/2004 Follow-up Info
I don't have the paper with all the info about my grass type and weeds.  I wll bring it in on Monday, May 24, 2004 and respond to your ANSWER at that time.

Thanks for all the info.


Answer -
The type of weeds don't make that much difference. Grass weeds, like crabgrass etc and broadleaf weeds like dandelions will go away when the soil is nice and rich.
Mostly, need to know what kind of grasses grow in your area, and what kind of soil you have.

Answer

Color doesn't make much difference in clays. Clay is hard to get a shovel into.
If that is clay under that soil, the water drains nicely down to the clay, and then it just sits there and drowns the roots. When clay is dry, it is too hard for any but the most determined roots (weeds) to go throw.
If it is sand, it would be light in color, and the water will drain too fast. If soil doesn't retain moisture well enough, grasses and plants will die of thirst.
Fescue doesn't spread by runners, so seeding is what you need to do.
Clay can be one of several colors. we have about 3 different kinds of clay in texas. some is black, and we call that "Gumbo" it is slick and slimy when it is wet. Some is real light colored, like sand, and when it is wet, it is slick and slimy. the other looks like regular good soil, but it is slick and slimy when it is wet, if you can get it to absorb enough water to get wet.
All of it is like trying to get a shovel through concrete, when it is dry.
NOTHING but weeds grows in any of those types, unless you till in a bunch of good stuff with it.
Actually bark mulch by itself will loosen it up, but it doesn't add any nourishment, until it composts. You really need to till in some humus, and some peat moss. go easy on the peat, unless the soil is very alkaly. Peat moss adds acid.
I went to a search engine and put in,   growing tall fescue  in maryland, and got this site for you to look at.
     http://iaa.umd.edu/umturf/Cultural/ESTABLISH&MAINTAIN_
FINE_LE
I think that is all of it. that is all I can see in my address bar
Actually, if you go to  http://iaa.umd.edu
you will get the University of Maryland's site, and you can search in there for turf grasses. You should be able to find out the acid/alkaly ratio needed too. You can contact your Agricultural Extension Agent to find out about soil testing.
From what I read on that page, you may not be able to seed this late in the year. You may have to wait until the fall.
this site lists noxious seeds, and seeds that are prohibited in Maryland.
http://www.blitzworld.com.native.noxious.htm
There is quite a lot of information on that site.
I would still go with the sugar or dry molasses for weeds. Once you get your soil nice and rich, weeds are not going to bother you, and not using weed killers will keep the beneficial critters like lizards etc, alive, and they will eat the grubs, which seems to be the biggest insect problem. they will eat other insects too.
Yo have such a completely different climate than I have here. It is not too late to seed a lawn here, but you have a much shorter summer, and it may not have time to establish a root system before a hard freeze.
Better to try though, maybe.
I put in  soil conditions in Maryland, and got this site, that looks interesting. According to this, a lot of the soil there is sandy.
Check out this site too
http://www.nearctica.com/biomes/edf/soils.htm
The light colored soil under the dirt could be too sandy. That won't hold water, and grass and plants die of thirst, becasue it doesn't retain the water long enough to keep them alive.
Soooo, either way, you are going to have to add something to your soil, either things to make it looser, bark mulch, peat, humus, compost etc, or some good loan soil to firm it up enough to hold moisture well.
I'm sorry I couldn't give you a more precise or shorter answer, but i am just not that familiar with your neck of the woods.
Hope the sites give youthinformation you need.
If they don't, give me another yell, and i will be glad to search some more.
Charlotte