"Seymour" wrote in message
om...
I live in southern New Jersey. My lawn is just awful, bare spots,
crabgrass, uneven ground, hard ground, black and red ants. I've spent
the last 2 years trying to improve it by fertilizing, seeding, weed
and feed, Scott's lawn soil. It seems the more I try, the worse it
gets. The crab grass halter I put down in the spring didn't do
anything.
I'm thinking of borrowing my father's Rototiller and diggin the whole
thing up and overseeding it. Anybody agree? I would think that this
is a good time to do it.
Please advise.

If it is as bad as you say then perhaps getting rid of the lawn and starting
from scratch is the best thing to do. I have seen many lawns returned from a
disastrous state without the type of major renovations you are considering
though.

I would caution you on a couple of things. First you should kill off
whatever you have growing there now, so an application or 2 of roundup is in
order. If you don't many of your problems will come back to haunt you.

Growing a lawn from seed is a tricky business. The weeds will move in
quickly and take it over. You won't be able to kill the weeds for fear of
also killing the new grass. When seeding a new lawn be prepared for it to
look shabby for a while until you can get it under control. Often it looks
quite bad for the first year.

If you are going to do it you should get at it fairly soon as you want to
kill the weeds of yourself and not let the frost get them and the fall is a
better time to seed a lawn than the spring.

btw. another consideration would be sodding the lawn. This has many
advantages as you start with a good-looking, weed-free lawn.

Peter H