Welcome to GardenWeb. Hope your early experiences are good for you.

If your seed has not been wet at all, it should be okay. But once you start watering it, it needs water EVERY day and it needs water 3 TIMES per day for only 10-15 minutes each time. The point of the water is to keep the seed moist until it sprouts. That could be two weeks for fescue seeds or four weeks for bluegrass seed. Unfortunately this is also the crabgrass seed sprouting season and it needs the daily water, too. So don't get alarmed but you are very likely to have a lot of crabgrass this season. Again, don't get alarmed because that can be fixed later on. At least crabgrass is green and healthy weeds look better than brown ones or dirt.

Start with some positive thinking. Taking care of a lawn is not rocket surgery. It is a hobby that can become an obsession. It also involves some chores that may or may not suit you. You absolutely must be prepared to water it several times a month. Unless you live in the area from Houston to the gulf of Mississippi, you cannot rely on rain. It also involves weekly mowing. By watering and mowing correctly you can have a pretty darned good looking yard even if it started off as all weeds. Anything else you do to the yard (fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide, and fungicide) are options that can try, but they are not necessary. Here are the basics:

1. After your seed has sprouted and you have grass, water deeply when you water, but don't water frequently. If your yard needs 1 inch of water per week, apply it all at one time, not spread out over seven days. When you transition from the new-seed watering program, do it with care. Instead of 10 minutes per day, three times a day, go to 20 minutes once every day for a couple days. Then back off to every other day for 30 minutes. Then back off to every fourth day for 45 minutes. Then see if you can go a full week and water for an hour or more. The idea is that in the hottest part of summer, your grass roots should be long enough to grab water from the deeper regions of the soil without having so much water at the surface all the time. Once you are not watering every single day, your chances of getting new weed seeds to sprout is very very low. I water once a week for 1-3 hours per zone and my zones overlap by 50%.

2. Mulch mow your grass at the highest setting on your mower. This will do the most for the nice appearance of your lawn. If you are mowing it at an inch or so and suddenly move it up to 3-4 inches, you will see some straggling grass for a few weeks. You can do that with no problems but it might look nicer if you move it up one notch every week until you get to the top. Tall grass will fight off a lot of weeds including crabgrass and dandelions.

3. If you want the yard to look really dark green, then fertilize with the fertilizer of your choice regularly. I fertilize with organic fertilizer on the federal holidays so I don't forget. Next few coming up are Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day. If you use synthetic fertilizer, skip the 4th of July.

If you hate chemicals, then go to the GardenWeb Organic Gardening forum and find the FAQ. There is one written for Organic Lawn Care. The program described there is inexpensive, effective, and safe for pets and kids.

You might be interested in the Weed Hound tool. It costs $20 at any box store. You can pluck tap rooted weeds like dandelions as fast as you can step on them. But after your grass gets up tall, you may not have so many weeds.

I would suggest working with the weeds this one last season. Then in the late summer to fall, kill or mow the weeds down and reseed again to get a good, dense, turf that will resist the weeds next season. Once you get the grass you want, keeping it is as simple as watering and mowing properly.

When you say weed and seed, did you mean weed and feed? Many weed killers adversely affect seed germination and/or new grass. If you put down weed killer at the same time as you put down seeds, you may not get any germination unless the weed killer is specifically made for use at seeding time.

I agree with David that you'll be better off fighting the weeds this spring and summer and tackling any seeding in the fall. In PA, you'll have much better results if you seed in the fall than if you seed in the spring.

I loosened the ground, put down a 2 inch layer of seeding soil, and applied the pre-mixed grass seed with fertilizer and mulch (it's blue and has shredded paper in it). I've been watering it once daily for the last three weeks since it's been down... I just found this forum so I didn't know to cut down watering to longer periods of time less frequently. The grass is now 3 inches high and I am very pleased with the results. Unfortunately, there is a slope in the lawn towards the house and whenever I water or it rains the water drains to this one corner of the lawn and sits there for quite a long time. The grass is not growing as well in this area and I was hoping someone has a solution. There is a plastic boarder that was already there when I started this project. When I bend the boarder you can see the water slowly flowing away from the puddle. Do I have to remove that boarder? Before I planted, I evened out the ground as best as I could. Would aerating the lawn improve drainage in this area? I tried poking holes 1/2 inch diameter 8 inches deep but with no success. Thanks,

Beth

Removing the border should allow the water to flow and not puddle so much.

The only way to make a low spot drain is to make it a high spot. Add soil to the low spot or remove soil from the high spots that surround the low spot and let it drain.

Thanks I had a feeling it would come to that. I just don't understand, the ground settled that much 3 weeks after leveling the ground. I'm nervous the ground will settle again after adding more dirt.

Mine settled for three years after having some underground plumbing pipes replaced. The contractor heaped all the soil that came out of the trench back on top of the trench. It stood up about 2 inches high and gradually settled back to level with the rest of the yard. He told me to "trust him," so I made a big mental note and tried it. Sure enough he was right.