Looks like a Kentucky bluegrass lawn that is struggling to come out of dormancy. It could be your neighbors have fescue grasses which do not go dormant, and that would be the difference. Wait another few weeks and it should start to look good.

The thing you did not do last fall was to winterize it with a high nitrogen fertilizer. Forget about all that water under the bridge and focus on the future.

Your lawn looks like it could be suffering from improper watering. You should be watering deeply and infrequently. Deep means 1 inch all at one time; not spread out over many days. You can determine what 1 inch is for you by setting some cat food or tuna cans and turning on your sprinkler(s). Time how long it takes to fill all the cans. That is your watering time from now on. Infrequently means with temps below 70, no more than once per month. Usually rainfall takes care of this. If you have watered at all this year, you're watering too much.

Yeah, that just looks slow, not like there's anything wrong with it at this point. And there's nothing wrong with slow.

This year, fertilize on the following schedule: Memorial Day, Labor Day, October 1, and when growth stops for the season and you're sure you've done the last mow (for you guys, probably around November 1 or a bit later, give or take). Use any off the shelf fertilizer you like with high nitrogen (first number) and low second and third numbers unless you have a soil test that somebody reads and says otherwise.

Or, if you're using organics, the schedule...actually, it's about the same, just use a synthetic for that last November 1st feeding since organics won't work then--it's too cold and there isn't enough time remaining in the season.

That'll keep the lawn green as late as it can be (mine never shut down this year), and bring it back as early as it can (growth resumed in March for me). Your mileage up there will vary, but Boston's climate is maritime enough that you should be able to do fairly well. I'm in the foothills of the Poconos.

I took a quick look at neighbors' grass and it did seem to be a different type.

Thank you very much for the advice dchall_san_antonio and morpheuspa. It's helped calm my nerves a lot, and I feel like I have a basic game plan.

Note the strip of green along the blacktop.

I wonder if that’s because soil temp there is higher.

That's what I assumed.

I noticed that, too. Later in the summer you'll notice the grass dries out faster near the concrete. If you have a concrete driveway meeting a concrete sidewalk, that area will dry fastest, so keep an eye on it. Also, if you are prone to getting chinch bugs in the lawn, they love hot soil and will make their first appearance at those corners.

The perimeter of the yards (front and back) are both much greener. It probably is the soil temperature then.

I got a thatching rake and a lot of dead grass is coming up with it. I'm not sure if it's too aggressive, but it does open up the grass to breathe. It looks a little threadbare where I've dethatched - I can see soil as opposed to just dead grass.

I worry a bit about it damaging the central part of the yards, but I'm thinking to just dethatch the yard tomorrow and throw down some fertilizer and see what happens next.

Yeah, don't do that. Small amounts of early season "thatch" (up to about a quarter inch) are nothing to concern yourself with and help to protect the crowns of the grasses (and aren't actually thatch, just the old dead stuff from last year that will rot off as the season gets going).

What you're doing is akin to ripping a barbed brush through your hair until your scalp bleeds. You (the grass) now needs to stop the bleeding and fix the damage...except, unlike you, the grass isn't even fully awake yet. Unfortunately, the diseases are awake and able to invade the cuts.

Sit back and wait. 'Tis the season to sit on your butt. I have plants waiting to go in and that's all they're doing. Waiting.

Oh. Do not fertilize yet. Fertilizing in April? Bad move. You'll light off fast, bright green, absolutely beautiful May growth that's gorgeous. Stunning. Lovely.

And that taps the roots of all their energy by pouring it into that juicy, sweet growth that insects and diseases just love--leaving none to fight said insects and diseases.

If you hold feeding until Memorial Day or, in your locale, early June, after that first flush of extreme growth is over. more goes into root storage for summer's stresses, it won't set off extreme growth, and your likelihood of getting a disease in the first place is far lower.

Proper feeding times are Memorial Day (that's never actually wrong, but can move a bit later further north), Labor Day, October 1, and when the grass stops growing for the year.

Thanks. On this advice, I decided to hold off. It's hard to not intervene seeing the lawn but I see more green coming up.

Besides the dormancy, I see how I messed up on the last cut, and probably let the grass stay too long every cut last season. The brown grass is about 3-5" long. I'm not sure if it's thatch because there's a little resistance if I pull on it. In some places there's a pretty serious matrix of the stuff - maybe 3/4" thick.

Anyway, I'll try not to look at the lawn or others' lawns for a while and hopefully the greening continues. Thanks for all the advice.

I ended up speaking with someone from the company that laid the sod originally. It was his opinion (not seeing the lawn but being familiar with the sod, area, etc.) that it was almost certainly the case that not watering and not fertilizing appropriately led to roots not forming sufficiently and that the elements (almost no snow cover this winter for example or high sun/heat in certain areas) led to the grass dying.

That said, now that it's getting closer to Memorial Day there appears to be at least some grass in all areas of the lawn, and it's much easier to pull out the brown stuff - only some is still rooted. I'd say depending on the area of the lawn the grass cover is 30-90% as strong. Much more did come back than what you can see in my pictures from several weeks ago.

My current thinking is to cut the grass short and use a dethatching machine on Memorial Day weekend, then overseed and apply a higher phosphorus fertilizer. I do have a few weeds in the yard, but I'm thinking that it's better to take the time now to try and thicken up the yard - and perhaps I'll try overseeding again when it really makes sense in the fall.

Currently trying to decide between using Scott's Thick'r Lawn Sun and Shade (premix) and trying separate seed and fertilizer from Jonathan Green. I have some MIlorganite, but I believe that the high nitrogen mix is wrong right now since what I need is to promote root growth rather than a beautiful crown.

You're overthinking this and will end up loving your lawn to death. I would fertilize on Memorial Day, practice DEEP AND INFREQUENT watering, and mulch mow high until August. This time of year, on Boston, you should be watering ONCE EVERY 3 WEEKS. If you are watering more often than that, you are both wasting water and washing nutrients out of the soil.

I get the sense Jason's gonna do what Jason's gonna do. What kind of lawn do you have? If it is KBG then overseeding probably won't work unless maybe if you overseed with something other than KBG. The thing is that healthy bluegrass spreads quickly so unless you have a lot of dead areas then overseeding doesn't make sense. We don't have current photos so it is hard for anybody to say.

Overseeding this late in spring is 50/50 but you're in Boston and if the summer isn't too bad your new seedlings might make it through. Good luck!

Plus seeding now is going to fail. Even in Boston, summers are more than harsh enough to destroy baby grasses, which are tuned for fall weather, not summer.

They're tolerant of cold nights, frosts, and snappy weather, not hot, hazy days and dry weather conditions. Grass is, far more than we think, really a cool-weather plant with characteristics more like a pansy or viola than a zinnia or marigold.

Feed well on Memorial Day, water through the summer (as David noted, deeply and infrequently, about once a week maximum an inch at a time, and you may only need to water every 3 weeks if our current weather trends continue), and reseed in mid-August if required as summer starts to wind down a bit, grow it in during late summer and into fall, and let it sleep during winter as a youngster. Which it's entirely capable and happy to do.

I'm going to disagree slightly with the watering recommendations. I think these two and three week time frames are more geared toward southern, warm season grasses with deep roots rather than northern lawns at least during the peak of summer. I used to keep my KBG here in NJ at 4 inches high and still couldn't go more than a day or two without the grass wilting in 90 degree heat. With dry weather in the 80's maybe you can go a week, but certainly not more than that. Maybe micro climates in different northern regions affect that, but I think you have to look at your own particular situation and water as needed.

Adding current pictures. Including some of my neighbors' lawn (with the red chairs). That's the main reason I keep coming back to wanting to intervene. We live in a duplex and I feel responsible for both lawns. Their side is doing a bit worse, maybe because their lawn got a lot of direct sun last summer. By the end of the season the grass wasn't doing too well in the center of their backyard.

It is KBG, or at least I'm pretty sure of it since it seems to be standard sod. I didn't know that it would spread itself. That's why I was thinking I'd have to seed.

Some more.

Last ones. You can see that it's the same issue all over.

Daniel said, " I'm going to disagree slightly with the watering recommendations. I think these two and three week time frames are more geared toward southern, warm season grasses with deep roots rather than northern lawns at least during the peak of summer. I used to keep my KBG here in NJ at 4 inches high and still couldn't go more than a day or two without the grass wilting in 90 degree heat."

Hi Daniel. Were you deep watering every other day?? Because here's morpheuspa's KBG lawn from July 2010 when he was watering once a week and the neighbors were watering daily. Don't those other lawns look like the OP's lawn?

Hi Dennis. Yes, I understand and you posted this pic 8 years ago when I started in this lawn forum. I'm just saying that after 8 years of observing my lawn here in NJ that the watering guidelines do not always work. I'm not against watering deep and infrequent. I'm just saying infrequent for a TX bermuda is different from a NJ KBG.

It does vary. Currently, my version of "deep and infrequent" is "I think I watered once last year."

Post my establishment year, I was more inclined to simply let the lawn go with nature and do its thing (the photo you see above is along the lines of that level of Deep and Infrequent, actually, where I'm barely watering at all). I have a Thing about tossing potable water at the lawn, which is perfectly capable of surviving long-term dormancy.

dchall: You imply, though do not explicitly state, that morpheuspa’s 2010 kbg lawn success ( and the neighbor’s lawn problems) are attributable primarily to their watering schedules/practives.

Do you know if he and his next door neighbor each carefully watered by hand, and only by hand? Each preventing water from straying across the property line?

The deep green demarcation edge in the photo is virtually a straight line from the street back to the houses. That suggests a major factor other than just watering. Unless each meticulously watered by hand.

Agree, or disagree?

I'm right here, you know. You can ask.

I asked him a lot of questions when he first posted the picture. It all boiled down to different watering practices. Were you thinking that the neighbor accidentally watered only Morph's lawn and not his own?

(waves) Seriously, folks, I'm standing right here...

I only watered once in the spring last year as well. It rained constantly, but I'm just saying that people new to lawns should understand that a guideline like "water once a week at 90 degrees" for a cool season lawn is not realistic, at least in my case, and you have to figure out what your lawn needs. At that temp my lawn needs water almost daily or it wilts quickly.

Wilting is actually not necessarily a demand or request for watering, it's a statement that water is leaving the system faster than it's being absorbed--or that the root systems are not up to supplying water as quickly as the leaf systems are transpiring it. It actually doesn't say anything about the state of moisture in the soil, which can be entirely adequate. Cool-season organisms will typically wilt when out of their temperature comfort ranges rather easily, so grasses would certainly be susceptible.

It's not an issue for grass to wilt mid-day in 90-degree weather, any more than it's an issue for most plants to do so. One of my best photos of the garden is in hundred degree weather and the greenery is a bit wilted.

The issue would be if the grass remains wilted after sunset when the roots have time to catch up and resupply the blades with water when the blade cools and the biological processing rates slow to something the roots can supply.

Furthermore, day-wilting produces hormonal responses that spark root growth as temperatures fall in the soil to where root growth can resume. Constantly supplying water as temperatures cross that point mean that root growth never starts when temperatures are appropriate for said growth. Consistent coddling never produces the deep mat of roots that will support grass (or any plant) against wilting, which means it will continue to wilt in less-harsh weather than more harshly-treated lawns.

There's a minor argument for syringing the lawn here, but that's not what we're discussing. That involves a drop of surface leaf temperature due to water contact and evaporative cooling, not a root watering.

By wilting I mean a color change as well. The thing is that my neighbor to the right and to the left water every morning during the summer heat and their 2.5 or 3 inch max KBG lawns fared better than my dense 4 inch lawn. Theirs didn't show any signs of stress. I'm just observing what happens rather than what should happen by the book. I'm also the one with all the fungus! ;)

" I'm also the one with all the fungus! ;) "

I'm beginning to see why you're the one with all the fungus. :-)

Tonal changes are normal with wilting.

You're talking to the guy who owns nine different shades of yellow paint, remember. Seriously, I'm trained to detect chroma, tone, and intensity differences. They change because the light is reflecting and refracting differently off the plant as the cells deflate from the water losses due to the inadequate and dehydrating root systems that can't keep up.

It's a bit late this spring, but in late summer, try isolating out a section and backing off with the watering. Push the roots deeper by slowly denying it a bit of water as temperatures drop a little.

morph - I've been doing this for 8 years now. I started deep and infrequent in 2013 and nearly sent my lawn into dormancy because 1) the roots prolly weren't deep enough yet and 2) I wasn't yet aware of the signs of a thirsty lawn, which I now am. I believe I am qualified at this time to make some conclusions, which I did above. I just think you have to be careful about blanket statements about how long you should be able to wait between watering. My soil is also on the sandy side, so I imagine that has something to do with watering intervals along with how hot/windy it is in my particular microclimate.

I'm not saying the advice on deep and infrequent is wrong. I do think there is probably a different standard between bermuda in Texas and KBG in Virginia, though. I'm just recommending that people look for signs that the lawn needs water instead of simply refusing to water because someone's hot weather lawn doesn't need water very often.

This year I've started emphasizing that the "rules" I have for watering are suggestions and not the gospel. They are a good start. The main point is that daily watering should not be needed or used anywhere. In FL and CA daily watering is the norm.

+1 David. It's a matter of training the lawn properly and constant coddling, simply put, leads to lawn diseases that lead to lawn weakness that lead to lawn diseases. And so on.

Daniel: Alrighty. However, on the balance, dormancy is better than overwatered and diseaseed, and the dry period might very well reduce the disease pressure on the lawn. Which is another possible consideration for this summer. Let it go dry and let the fungus die back during a dormant period on the lawn; it can't survive it. The grass can.

However, it's not necessarily a matter of an observation than the correct ones. Wilting during the day is normal. Color changes and graying out of the lawn during the day in extremely hot weather is normal. If it doesn't recover by early morning...then it's time to water.

Sandier soils (low in OM) will certainly require watering more often than my nice silt (which has been enhanced in OM now for a very long time to very high levels). But every other day? There's no way I'd ever make that recommendation for the reasons already stated--I'd literally be prescribing fungal diseases to the lawns, and it would be unnecessary even in the sandiest soils as long as the lawn is established properly.

Fortunately, even an improperly established lawn can be re-established at any time.

Granted I'm in the south but it is not uncommon to see grass growing wild in the sand dunes at the gulf coast. Here is a picture of St Augustine escaping into the dunes at Port Aransas, TX.

None of that grass is irrigated or fertilized. All it gets is rainwater, salt spray, and dog pee. That is the dog walk area for the condo we were staying at. The mowed part roughly follows the property line. I measured the tall St Augustine to be 31 inches high which corresponds perfectly to my experiment growing St Aug without mowing.

morph interesting idea to kill the fungus by not watering. Problem is like last year when Mother Nature wants everything to be wet. I didn't mean to hijack this thread, though. I'm not sure if the OP got an answer he was comfortable with.