Elena Sofia wrote:

Jim Ledford wrote:

the root of the problem was how the neighborhood was
constructed. all the top soil was scraped away, trees
knocked down and houses built. yards sodded or seeded
without any soil conditioning. lawns lasted long enough
to sell the houses and then died. sad, but that's what
most americans receive when they purchase in a newly built
neighborhood.

Short of having to redo the lawn from scratch, what can one do, if
anything, to work with an existing soil that was poorly conditioned
from the beginning. Is there such poor conditioning that may make it
necessary to just start all over, or is there always hope by taking the
right corrective action. (For example, you described earlier the
effect of lime on heavy clay soil. Can there be so much clay that it's
impossible to or impractical to do anything?)

Thank you.

work with the lime get the pH correct. mow what lawn you
got and be patient while the lime works it's wonderful thingie..

observe the bottom picture on this web page. at my shooting
sports club we scraped the earth flat and bare to create our
200 yard rifle range. the grass you see in that bottom picture
is fescue growing in pure red clay. took a year and a half to
make that. it's located in Franklin county NC. the air temps
are running around 90F in June and even hotter now in July.

http://personalpages.bellsouth.net/t...r/barrier.html

with lime you can make it work, just be patient.

one more thing. I read your other post. you got pine trees
over that lawn? NEVER NEVER mow pine straw into your lawn.
rake it up first. everything falling from a pine tree is pure
acid. let a pine cone lay for 3 days and then look at the grass
under it.