summer lawn care

[Striperhound]

Guys, I figure there is a wealth of experience here so gotta ask. At the new house my lawn is mostly established after hydroseed. Soil is very, very sandy to begin with. I am going to overseed this fall when the heat stops. The lawn is browning up pretty good right now even with lots of water, What can I apply to the lawn to get it back greened up and healthy looking. Also have alot of crab grass due to the sandy soil and hydroseed-weed mix the bulider used. What can I do to get the crab grass down under control. Thanks in advance for the responses.

[UserRemoved1]

LOTS of water. Let it brown it's not worth watering now, once it browns it's dormant anyways and will come back as soon as the temp cools and it starts raining more.

The crabgrass needs to be hit with a pre-emergent early in the spring before it starts to sprout. Not going to get rid of it now so don't warry bout it this year...anything you put down for crabgrass now will not allow you to seed this fall. Pick a good seed meant for the areas it's in, ie sun/shade etc. Usually the stuff they put down for new houses is crap see that is about 40% weed seeds.

Get some grub stuff down soon too or anything you do will be a waste as the grubs will turn into billbugs and beetles once they eat your roots.

I'd wait til about the end of september when it cools nice, overseed it, use a new seed fertilizer, then water the piss out of it and let it grow up. Sometime around November 1-15 I'd cut it real short to keep winter kill and fungus down, and at the same time give it a shot of Scott's winterizer. In the spring any seed that didn't take before it got cold will germinate. Give it a shot of lime and crabgrass stuff sometime around-late March if the snow is gone then sometime around late May you can give it a weednfeed.

I had a Scott's lawn for 17 years. No more...I'd rather let the grass do it's own thing now and keep the chemical run-off down.

Also if the soil is sandy that is not conducive to growing good grass. It needs fertile soil/loam. When you cut it, use a good mulching mower don't rake it. If it's done right you won't see any of it, the thatch will stay down, the lawn will benefit from the decaying grass and if the lawn is thick it will automatically choke out all the weeds.

Keep your mower blade SHARP too.

[justplugit]

Scott said it all. Only thing i can add is, buy a premium seed with low

weed content,and if your going to use a good blue grass mix, put the

seed down late August as it will take 2-3 weeks to germinate and

then like Salty said, it will be growing under ideal conditions in late Sept.