Welcome to being the latest of the Lawn Whackos. You're in great company...with the rest of all of us here.

You're not clueless, you're just starting out. As you learn, this will change.

$150 for 500 square feet works out to $0.30 a square foot. For that, I'd come up there and install it for you. :-)

All you need is a good rake, several hours, and seed. Kill off the crabgrass (this may take several tries with Roundup as that stuff seems to be able to survive nuclear war). Once dead, rake the whole area clear and get the soil scratched up well.

Perfectly-workable-case, get any good seed mix off the shelf. Best-case, listen to Bestlawn or others for suggestions.

Seed. Reverse your rake and lightly cover the seed. Water two to four times daily for short periods. There you go, lawn, in one to four weeks, depending. The same kind you'd've gotten from TruGreen.

Cost...about $8 for the seed if you buy way too much for overseeding purposes. $20 for the rake.

And you get to keep the rake.

You'll get weeds, that's assured. You would have with their seeding as well.

REALLY horrible section between the sidewalk and the road of which maybe ten feet by thirty feet needs to be re-done.

That's called a hell strip because it's just hell on lawns. :-) That area frequently requires some help, extra water through the year, and reseeding. It just doesn't flourish too well under most conditions.

Once all this works, we'll be glad to wean you off TruGreen and get you a much nicer lawn. :-)

As noted, the hell strip is just a horrible place to grow grass. You might consider some other groundcover or flowers. If you are set on grass, plan on watering that area more heavily and redoing it every year. Between summer heat and salt runoff in winter, the grass takes quite a beating.

Also, when picking a grass seed out, don't try to get fancy if you are just doing a strip. There are lots of threads on here about picking the best new KBG, but that isn't what you want. Most of the premium KBG are probably darker than your existing lawn and would stick out. The mainstream KBG at the box store(Scotts etc) has a better chance of matching your existing lawn.

Also, when picking a grass seed out, don't try to get fancy if you are just doing a strip.

Good point!

With the flowers and groundcover, check with your city before you do it. They usually have control over that strip and generally have some rules about what can and can't go into it.

Okay, based on what I've been seeing, I am going to just try my hand at simply fixing the dead spots this year, using box store seed. I tried asking a question in the ongoing KBG thread, but I think I'm out of my league over there. I think that a nice, simple goal is best: fix the lawn this year and then start working on the grass mixture next year.

First, I am going to see how well the Trugreen kills off the crabgrass. It's getting sort of yellowy-brown around the perimeter (they're using something new that doesn't turn everything purple), but unfortunately we had an absolute downpour about 90 minutes after they applied, so I don't know that it did what it needed to. If it doesn't look good (or should I say if it doesn't look bad), I will use Roundup this weekend. Actually, one of the local box stores has a significantly cheaper version with the same active ingredients that I've used with success in other places.

I'll reapply the grasskiller as needed next weekend (the 18th). We're going to be gone all afternoon, that will be a good morning to spray everything.

Then the weekend of the 25th I'll scratch and seed. Does that sound like a good plan for my part of the country? Or do I need to wait another week or so? (I've never been comfortable that the Roundup just "goes away" in a week.)

Joe

P.S. Thanks for the notes on the strip. We just have grass on ours, and all I plan to do is replace the grass.