On 28 Jul 2006 10:54:33 -0700, bthiede wrote:
I moved into my new house in May. The contractor tilled and put seed
down, but unfortunately I was gone a lot for the first few weeks so I
wasn't there to water/take care of the grass, so it didn't do well.
Also, I think the soil is pretty bad. Now I have some grass, but
mostly weeds and hard, rocky soil.

I sent a soil sample to be tested, but aside from the treatments to get
the soil right, what else do I need to do before planting?

How much exercise would you like? g

How spotty is your lawn? 1% grass? 10%? 80%? In the lower numbers,
I'm inclined to go with the scorched earth policy and till everything in,
with as much compost as I could lay hands on easily and cheaply, and then
replant at the correct time (I suspect August or September might be a bit
soon in your part of the world -- talk to your Extension Service.)

There are several ways to go he

1) overseed what you have, ignoring weeds at the moment, then using
a selective herbicide or hand-weeding to clean up the weeds later.
I'd probably go for this option if you've got a fair coverage (75%)
of the species you want now.

2) clean up the weeds now (by hand, by spot spraying, by solarization, by
tilling everything), retill with as much organic matter as you can just
before planting some really good seed.

3) fertilize and water this fall, and hope what you've got fills in (my
least favorite method here)

I replanted about 0.25 acres last fall; I'm in Oregon, and our property is
on an old beach of some sort. Our neighbor brought over his tractor and
disk and tilled for me -- we've got enough rocks from small-potato to small
doghouse size that his tiller was often bouncing out of the ground as he
hit fans of rock. Two neighbor kids and I picked up about half a ton of
rocks out of that area, and I raked it by hand, planted by hand, and walked
the seed into the soil. Pretty good growth this year (about 90% coverage),
but it would have been better had I had a few dump-truck loads of compost
to work in when I planted.

Unless you want to go for repetitive strain injury, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't
do that all with a Garden-Claw sort of digger. Look in the local papers...
there's usually someone with a small tractor and tiller, or someone with a
good walk-behind tiller who's willing to spare your back for a few dollars.

The other issue you're going to have this time of year is finding seed that's
been properly stored. You don't want stuff that's been sitting out in a
shed all summer; you may be better off ordering over the internet, or
finding the better garden stores and finding out how they've stored their
seed, or when they're getting fresh shipments. No point in paying for
half-fried seed lots.

Kay