This is how my yard looked 3 weeks ago when I was watering every night. You can se where the corner is just starting to die.

This is how my yard looked 3 weeks ago. You can see where the corner is starting to die. This is when I was watering every night for 20-30 min.

I just checked back. The OP lives in Lewiston, ID. High desert.

From this angle it looks like the center of the yard is considerably higher than the edges. Is that an illusion or is it higher?

Summer is not the time to reseed. But while you're waiting for fall, you can apply compost if you want to spend that much money or organic fertilizer. Personally I believe organic fertilizer is 10x more effective and 1/10 the cost compared to compost.

Fall is the time to seed northern grasses. Fall seeding time begins as soon as the summer heat breaks. When the temps cool off in the evenings, that's the time.

What kind of grass did you have? That is awfully hot for a northern turf grass. Do you want this to look like a very serious lawn? Would a slightly less serious lawn work for you? I'm asking because bpgreen, in Salt Lake City, has grown a really nice lawn from a variety of wheatgrasses, strawberry clover, and blue grama. These are prairie bunch grasses, but when you get them seeded close together and mowed, it looks mostly like a real lawn. Here's a picture of his lawn.

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These grasses are slow growing and amazingly drought tolerant. He starts watering in June and mowing in late June. I believe he mows once a month along with watering once a month.

I would say that that is accurate that the center of the lawn is higher than the edges, but I am unsure if it is considerable. I could put a 2x4 across it with a level and see tomorrow morning.

I understand about planting right now. I will wait until the fall. In the meantime I will put some of the organic fertilizer on the yard for right now to fill in where the dead grass was.

What do you mean exactly by organic fertilizer?

I can't tell you what kind of grass it was. Just a mix from home depot.

I appreciate the recommendation on the clover mix, but I want a real grass lawn.

Thanks for the help in advance!

There are commercially available brands of granulated organic fertilizer. Espoma is one of the national brands. After decades of ignoring organics, Scott's now makes one. What I did was read the ingredients on the labels and made my own. Typical ingredients on commercially bagged organic fertilizer include corn, wheat, soybean, cottonseed, alfalfa, and various other ground up nuts, beans, seeds, and grains. The application rates for all of them was about the same at 15 to 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. So what I did was shop for the least expensive of the ingredients and used that. At the time it was corn. And at the time I was not working so I stretched it a little thin. But now I have settled in on alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) applied at 20 pounds per 1,000. Here is a picture showing the effect.

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That picture was posted here by mrmumbles in mid June, 2011. He had applied a handful of alfalfa to that spot in mid May. You can see the improved color, density, and growth. Organic fertilizers feed the microbes in the soil, and they create health in your soil. I would apply over the entire yard.

My concern is growing a normal lawn from northern grasses in your desert climate. What kind of lawns do your neighbors have?