I have a small patch of grass that is now about 4 months old. It was started from Pennington dense shade mix, which is a mix of tall fescue and red fescue. It has been mowed a couple times.

I've noticed that it doesn't seem to respond well to foot traffic. Footprints stay in the grass for quite some time. In addition, a lot of the grass appears to be flattened. Is this normal for this type of grass? Am I being paranoid?

Here are some pictures. Thanks for your time!

http://imgur.com/a/W1W78

Planting in April was not a great idea. If the summer happens to be a warm one, then newly planted grass can suffer. That is why fall is the best time to seed grass. This happens to be a really hot summer, so lawns are dying all over the country. Yours is not hardly dead, thought, so you're doing something right.

What is your watering schedule, frequency, and duration?
How high are you mowing?
Have you fertilized with anything?
Have you applied any herbicides or insecticides?

Here are three of your four pictures

View from above

View from below

Flattened grass - Normal?

And here is fescue left unmowed

Since planting the seeds I have been watering twice a day for 15 minutes with sprinklers and a timer. The lawn was recently fertilized with Scotts 24-24-4.

They should have told you to back off on the water once the seed came in, especially in deep shade. After the first month you should have started backing off. By now you should be watering a spring install about 2x per week for 30 to 45 minutes each time. In fact with the shade you can probably go to once a week for an hour. The soil surface should be completely dry before you water again. But at the same time, the grass should look good because the roots will be deeper into the soil where that deep water is.

I would be hitting it monthly with organic fertilizer. You can do that in the summer. Changing the watering frequency and adding organic Fertilizer should perk up the grass.

Also, the grass isn't brown in those pictures, those are pine needles from the numerous pine trees surrounding the yard.

15 yard penalty for withholding information!!

I'm betting the pine needles are matting the grass down. Rake them away and see what happens.

There's your main issue right there. Mowing with a string trimmer is not recommended. Give it a very light raking and see if you can borrow a lawn mower from a neighbor. I also wouldn't have fertilized synthetically in the middle of summer. It forces top growth when the grass is at its most stressed.

The grass was raked and mowed with a mower. It was mowed a bit short (was not mowed by me, long story). Several small locations were scalped by the mower. Lesson learned for next time.

Soon after being mowed, the red fescue dried up and turned brown. Being new to this, I am not sure if it has gone dormant, or has died altogether. I have not changed my watering schedule.

I have a few theories, let me know what you think:

1. Since only the red fescue has turned brown, and the TTTF has not, is the red fescue just going dormant in the late summer?

2. A few days before being mowed, as I had mentioned in my first post, I fertilized with a 24-24-4 fertilizer. Did this kill the red fescue?

3. A shorter-than-desired mow has put too much stress on the red fescue, killing it.

Any thoughts? I'll reply with some pictures soon.

Cutting with the trimmer is not good. It does not get any lift while cutting like a mower will. This is leaving some of the grass matted down and just cutting the stuff up top, probably the regular fescue. The pine needles are not getting mulched or broken up the way they would in a mower deck, and even something as small or light as a pine needle can easily keep blades of fine fescue down. Between that and the non lift cut, your fine fescue is staying down. The trimmer is also not cutting the blades in a "healthy" way like sharp mower blades do. Lastly, the lawn does not look full enough to support the blades for a nice stand, probably because of all the previously mentioned things.

Go get yourself a push mower off craigslist for $50, sharpen your blades, and keep up with regular mowings at 3.5" or so. In a couple weeks, labor day weekend, overseed it.

...Oh, and follow the watering info from above.