The grass looks like St Augustine. Where do you live? ...in Texas, yes, but please be more specific.

Exponential growth of the normal grass can be caused by the application of organic material in that one spot. For example if a mouse or small bird dies and decomposes, that can cause that type of growth. Generally if a lawn is fertilized with organic fertilizer at least once per year you will not see that. If you have a long history of using only chemical fertilizers, this can happen. Or if the grass has not been fertilized in a few years it can happen.

Abilene tx, and I have only been living here a short time maybe 1 yr but I just planted some generic grass seed a month or so ago. It wasn't st Augustine that I planted. And I haven't used fertilizer of any kind, except some fertilized soil for the wife's potted plants which are nowhere near this patch of grass. I have recently and approximately the same time I noticed this patch's supergrowth, started watering twice a day. However, there are more of the same types of grass throughout the yard that don't grow like this patch. And I havnt seen any death in my yard except the ants that we poisoned a week ago.

Okay, thanks and I'm giving you a 15 yard penalty for withholding valuable information. ;-)

You're also on the lawn forum watch list for potentially withholding more important information...like what was in this 'generic grass seed.' ;-)

Somewhere on your bag of seed was a Guaranteed Analysis. If you can find the bag, please report back here with the seeds in the bag.

Whatever grass seed you put down, unless it was bermuda or some sort of prairie grass, will die out pretty soon. Piled on top of that you are making mistake after mistake. You can recover but let's see if I can explain.

All grass seed except bermuda should be put down in the fall when there is still 9 months for the roots to develop. The roots on your new grass will not be sturdy enough to withstand the heat in Abilene this summer. You will be left with a mix of weeds which have developed an affinity for Texas summer heat. Crabgrass is one of those grasses.

Your next mistake is watering 2x per day. This continual moisture is exactly what the weed seeds require for germination. Here is where you are between the proverbial rock and that hard place. If you back off to normal (once per week) watering, your new grass will die fast. If you continue watering 2x per day, your grass will still die but be replaced with weeds. You might be able to nurse your new grass through the summer buy you will continue to seed weeds popping up like the one you pictured above. That was a weed, by the way. I could have told you that the first time had you mentioned the fact that this was newly seeded.

Your next mistake was poisoning ants. What did you use? Ants in the garden are seldom a serious problem. Did you apply insecticide to the lawn or just to the ant hills?

It is too late in the summer to fertilize with chemical fertilizers. You may use organic if you like.

What I would try to do is nurse the yard along and see what you have left in late August. No matter what you have, it can be fixed. There are two popular turf grasses in Texas. Those are St Augustine and bermuda. There are varieties of both but you need to decide on which one you want. There are other grasses, prairie grasses, which also work well in Texas, but they are not very popular. The allure of the prairie grasses is that they rarely require water, mowing, or fertilizer. Sounds too good to be true, but they are not perfect. They have a longer dormancy period in the winter, and they have really long flower and seed stalks if you let them go unmowed. Otherwise they can be deep green and easy to care for.

Look around in Abilene and see what the neighbors have. Be sure to check out the large homes on the large lots a few miles south of the lake south of town. Those are either going to be bermuda (TIF 419 sod) or they will be St Augustine (Floratam for full sun). Unless you have a lot of sunlight, you can grow the same grass at your house. It is almost as easy to have a really nice lawn as a weed filled lawn. The biggest difference is timing of the application of water, mowing, and fertilizer. You will still need to water, mow, and fertilize but if you do it wrong, you get weeds.

When you write back to tell us what seeds were in your bag, also tell us how you prepared the ground for the seeds. Did you dig up the soil, incorporate anything, rototill, compost, or did you just put seed down on the ground? Did you roll the seed down? Cover it with mulch or straw? Your answers will help us understand where you are in understanding lawn care.

Holy Balogna's Batman, you sure make me realize that I've ventured into an area of expertise that is about 100% unknown to me.

First off the supplies that I've used, http://www.walmart.com/ip/Pennington-Seed-Ultimate-Seed-Mix-Southern-Grass-Mix/20918345 and http://images.lowes.com/product/converted/687073/687073002706lg.jpg

Now for a few more answers. I am only renting so I am just trying to provide a nice spot to entertain some friends in the backyard. I am not trying to enter a lawn looks contest. So I doubt I will be tilling up the entire lawn and planting seeds and gardening from scratch to get it perfect. I am simply trying to fill in some dead spots, make the grass fuller, and trying to clear the pests like the several different varieties of ants I HAD. I just spread the grass seed by hand, it wasn't expensive so didn't see the need to go all out and do a lot of work, specially since I already have a lawn, just needs some tweaking. When I spread the seed, I just tossed it around trying to get it as evenly spread as I could without buying a spreader. And a little heavier in the dry, dead spots. Then tried to keep the birds, squirrels, and ants out of it till it had time to take. I succeeded in all the above, except for the ants. Which actually helped me before I murdered them. There were a few spots, that the ants, piled the grass seed upon around their mound entrance.
This is where the grass seed actually took root and grew the best. I had previously had a big mound near my garden (and no I don't know what kind of ants they were or weren't, ants=good enough description for me) I looked up organic methods of removal, found boiling water to be the most effective for the price of $0, so I doused the ant hill and poof they were gone.....2 ft away, so i did it again and they disappeared for good. But now I got little ants all over my yard, so I decided to use the poison. And now they have all but disappeared. I used the poison after spreading the seed, and sprayed the entire lawn with the said poison using mixing instructions on the bottle.

As for watering too much. I went on 2 deductions for the schedule I am using. First, the seed said keep wet until the grass has taken root, and secondly, In the wetter climates of the U.S. including East Texas where there is a lot of water there is a lot of green grass.I'll Slow it down if it makes you happy gardenmaster lots of laughs.

And for looking around abilene, I cant tell what grass is what from looking so short of knocking on everyone's door, i wouldn't be able to find any information from looking at neighboring yards.

This is what I want and maybe you can make a few more detailed seed recommendations. I don't want a thick hard grass, I want a full bodied lawn with a narrow blade grass. But also, I don't want to spend alot on it as, what I have will do, its just not "perfect". If 1 of the 2 species you mentioned have a thin blade grass then I'll look into getting some of that seed when its time to try again. But the original image I posted is too thick a blade for me.

Lawn I would like to have

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Carpet_Grass.JPG

Lawn I would NOT like to have

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTlbTw_xZq5alyc5RPnx24htr4SVSNm5bHwG6KzWdr_GC-5YgN3

The grass seed I used, that took, (where the ants helped me) is precisely what I want, if you can find a picture of a lawn that has been planted with that seed, you will see what I am looking for. And the bag says drought resistant so i figured it would grow here.

Got it. Lots of helpful info, thanks!!

St Augustine is the grass you DO NOT want to have. It is coarse bladed grass that sort of gives the appearance of crabgrass but it is much better behaved than crabgrass. SA is an unusual grass in that it is fairly easy to get rid of with normal herbicides designed NOT for grass. It is just sensitive to those chemicals. Otherwise it makes a great lawn if you can adjust to the appearance.

There are some weeds which have the coarse bladed look. Some include Johnson grass and dallisgrass. That tall weed in your yard might even be St Augustine.

Fine blades grasses that grow well in the Abilene heat are bermuda, some zoysias, and some prairie grasses like buffalo and blue grama. Bemuda would be the most normal choice. Since this is a rental, the grass you are looking for comes in a seed bag. And since this is a rental you should probably get the seed at Walmart or Lowe's or anywhere else locally. There will be some weed seed in it but you already are seeding into something else, so may as well use the inexpensive seed. The other benefit of bermuda is that it should be seeded in the summer heat. NOW. Bermuda is designed for hot weather so even the new roots will survive when other grasses and weeds around it are dropping dead. In fact you likely have bermuda in your lawn right now.

If I was going to do this project in Abilene this time of year, I would start by stopping watering completely for 2 weeks. See what lives and rake out the dead stuff. If there are weeds that you really don't want, spray them with round up, wait a few days, rake up those weeds, and do the seed. If you want to rent a roller that will help with the seed germination. Otherwise walk over every square inch of the lawn after the seed goes down to push the seed against the soil. In fact have a party on the new seed. After the party, start watering 3x per day for just long enough to keep the top of the soil moist. Do that for at least 2 weeks or until you think you have 80% germination of the seed. Then start backing off on the watering frequency and going up on the duration. Ideally you would be watering one full inch of water one time per week in this heat. As the temps cool down you can back off on the frequency but keep it at an inch every time. In the winter the frequency would be more like once per month.

Bermuda can take all the high nitrogen fertilizer you can give it, once per month, all season long. This, being a rental, probably won't get that kind of care. I'm just saying you do not have to be too careful about fertilizer.

Bermuda should be mowed more toward the low adjustments on your mower. Mow it too high and it will thin out allowing weeds to come in. It is more dense when mowed low.

When the grass comes in and you have mowed it twice, you can start thinking about spot spraying the weeds. For broadleaf weeds like clover and dandelions the product is weed b gone. For grassy weeds, the product is probably Round Up. Round Up will kill the bermuda, too, so use it very carefully in spot spray applications.

If you decide you want to have a nicer bermuda lawn, there is an essay online called the Bermuda Bible. Search for that and it will give you tips about mowing and fertilizers.

Using insecticide on an entire lawn is a problem. Once you get a good, dense, lawn in, the ants can live in harmony and you'll never see them. The problem is the insecticide also kills off an entire class of beneficial microbes that live in your soil. The best way to get those back is to scatter compost on the grass. If you are trying to cut costs, forget about that and simply get some fertilizer which is chicken litter based. It will be an organic type fertilizer with the first or second ingredient listed will be chicken, poultry, or turkey litter. Use that once in a few weeks and the soil should restore itself from the insecticide.

Ok, I will work on this and appreciate all the info. I hope I can remember to repost in a while so you don't stay up at night wondering if I figured it out, but I am a very forgetful old man lol.