I have to admit that I don't get the whole Dye thing.

If the grass is truly dead and not just dormant, then it is just a matter of time (about 8 weeks if you are regularly watering) before the dead grass decomposes. What will you put the dye on then? And what will you do while the grass that you are going to be forced to reseed at that point is germinating and establishing?

Dyes are a quick-fix if you need to make the lawn look OK for a short period, but there is an end to the "short period", unless you're just going to spray the dirt green.

Andy is right, eventually the dead grass you dyed will disappear anyway. in that case you will probably need plastic turf lol.

"...but I can't find it in my search." Do a search via the internet. I did one using "turf dye" on Bing and got 617,000 responses.

I've seen dyed grass in SoCal. It looks exactly like your grass is wearing a bad wig.

I think I can help. I grew up in SoCal and lived in several places. SoCal is a big place when it comes to grass zones. Please help me help you by answering a few questions.

Where do you live (be pretty specific (don't need street but I need the town))?
What kind of grass do you have?
How often do you water?
How low do you mow?
How often do you fertilize?
Do you spray for weeds, insects, or fungal diseases?

Dchall -
I live in Aliso Viejo, CA. As you probably know, it's approx. 6 miles from Laguna Beach. We have a lot of humidity but still can have some warm summers. Pretty tepid winters.

We water with sprinklers morning and evening.
We have such a small area (150 square feet) that my husband mows with a hand mower.
As for fertilizing, I think my husband does that every 3 or more months, and yes, we do spray for weeds, etc.

Now, most importantly, we live right next door (with open slate fence) to a large park. It's beautiful, obviously, but a pain in the neck because a lot of other grasses get into our yard via wind/birds, whatever, so we have probably every grass type in the book.

We've laid marathon sod, seeded with marathon, seeded with winter rye, summer rye, patch perfect, etc, etc.

In the past 3 1/2 years, it's never stayed green completely for more than a month. We've tried EVERYTHING, and it's sooo expensive, that we've toyed with the idea of artificial grass, but that's expensive, too.

I've told my husband that if the last seeding (partial growth so far) isn't totally successful, I want to seed it with dichondra and pray it takes over! DH thinks the other grasses would take over the dichondra eventually, even if he kills the current grass and digs down to remove everything...(he did that less than a year ago, placed marathon sod on it and it was beautiful for approx 1 month..seriously)and it then got about 20 burned spots, and in that small of an area, you can imagine what it looks like! OH, also our dogs pee in the park! Honest!

SO good luck and thank you for trying to help me! ANY advice would help, but honestly, I think we've done everything we can!
Cathee
P.S. Most of the year, half of the lawn has full sun and half has full shade. Maybe we should plant each side with a different grass! HA!

I live in the Mojave desert and use tall fescue. It grows great in both full sun and full shade (granted the full shade grows much quicker, and darker green, but it's hardly notaceable).

I think your problem may be overwatering (once in morning and night). You should get down to the point where you should only be watering maybe twice a week, for long periods. Grass needs longer, infrequent waterings to establish deep roots. I think your grass may be getting burnt because of all the frequent short waterings...it doesn't allow enough time for the roots to grow deeply.

The only time where you should do multiple waterings per day would be for new grass seed to germinate. Once that grass is 2-3" tall (about 3 weeks), then you can gradually transition to long waterings once every few days.

If the watering is the problem, then what do we do when we seed and it "spot" grows? That's the problem now. So just let the part that grew in stay and forget the part that didn't grow? Once again we have the same problem of spotted good grass inbetween no growth! It's just so bizarre. I am giving up, I swear! Honest to goodness, when we laid the sod down at the beginning of the year, we had a gorgeous lawn (as small as it is) and after a few months, there were spots of round brown grass (urine) all over and our dogs had NOT peed in that area (as I said, they go next door to the park and are not allowed outside without us because they bark so much at the other dogs in the park). Is it possible that rabbits, squirrels, skunks peed there?? I never see cats anywhere outside, and our yard is fenced in for dogs. CRAZY!
Also, you live in the desert and we live near the beach! Wouldn't that make a difference?

Oh man! I thought this was going to be easy but maybe not. The physical problem is easy. Now the psychological problem is that you have already made up your mind that watering is not the problem or an insurmountable problem. There is no way to overemphasize this: Watering IS your problem.

You are watering all the time as if you are starting new seed. STOP THAT! New seed requires continual moisture for the seed to germinate. Once it sprouts and you have grass, then back waaaaaay off. Over watering caused round shaped FUNGAL DISEASE that probably wiped out some of your lawn and allowed weeds in. By watering like you do, you are encouraging every weed seed on the property to germinate.

I used to live in your climate (Hawthorne), the desert (Indio and Palm Desert), and in between (Downey, Pomona, Riverside, and Temecula). Watering is much the same everyplace. Fixing this is probably going to be hard for you to do.

The proper way to water is deeply and infrequently. Deeply means 1 inch all at once. Infrequently is where the difference in coast versus desert comes in. Infrequently in the desert means once PER WEEK at the MOST. The only place that is a little different is the area between Banning and Cabazon (because of the extremely dry winds every day). But the point is that if they only have to water once a week in the desert sand, then you should only have to water once a month in the coastal fog and gummy soil. The secret to that is to water long enough when you do water.

In the summer heat in San Antonio, I water from 1-3 hours per week, all at once. There are a lot of factors in that including shade, wind, wind direction, heat, soil type, soil depth, grass type, grass coverage, and probably some more. In any case what you want to do is force the roots to grow deep and to allow the soil to dry out at the surface before watering. You cannot go 'cold turkey' in making that change. I would start by eliminating all evening watering and see how that goes for a week. Then eliminate the occasional morning watering, too. Watch the grass carefully for signs of drought stress. You probably have very shallow roots which cannot go very long between watering. Eventually they will grow deeper looking for the moisture. When you see the grass looking wilted, water immediately but water for a longer period than you were watering before. Then see how long it will go. I would like to see you go to monthly watering before November considering where you live.

The other thing you could do to help yourself is to go to a full organic fertilizer program. You need organic matter in the soil to help retain moisture (remember that moisture is your problem). Normally I would send you to a local feed store to buy organic fertilizer wholesale, but your lawn is so small, just look at a nursery for it. Organic fertilizer is made from ground up grains, nuts, beans, and seeds. I'm talking about wheat, corn, soy, cottonseed, and alfalfa. You can buy those at wholesale prices at a feed store. If you cannot find organic fertilizer (and I have had trouble everywhere in SoCal finding it), let me know and I'll get you on track. You are near a very rural area and have lots of feed store choices. Anyway apply at a minimum of 1 pound per 100 square feet. With organic you can go up to 8 pounds per 100 square feet on a monthly basis and not hurt anything. Unlike chemical fertilizers, the more you use the better results you are going to see. One of my organic buddies has used that amount 10 times per season and had a beautiful lawn. At that point it becomes more of an obsession than a hobby, but it's his obsession and he can afford it.

Hope this was helpful.

When we still had a Bermuda lawn that turned brown in SoCA winter, I dyed it a few times. I don't recall the brand but it came in quarts and was concentrated. It went on with a pump sprayer and looked GREAT; deep KBG green and not phony looking at all. You had to get right on top of it to see it wasn't live grass. We got several compliments from neighbors who thought we got the Bermuda to grow in winter. The dye lasted about six weeks. Foot traffic shows. Actually the winter-dyed Bermuda looked richer and better than in its mid-summer prime. Ten years ago, we resodded with fescue that stays green all year (but the $%#*! Bermuda is coming back)

use some of scotts "anytime" fertizer and water in. The nitrogen will green it up very nicely

Maybe you should try seeding as well. I preferr seeding because it's way cheaper than sod, and I think it gives grass a much better chance then just throwing a cut piece of grass on top of dirt.

Think of it like your garden (or at least mine)...plants do much better when they're adapted straight from seed. But when I buy transplants, they always suffer for a few days after being planted, and some die completely.

I really think I got the message on the watering. I was wrong about 2 times a day, it's been 1 time a day and I've told my DH what you said. So when I "spot" seed, then I water that area for approx one month until the grass grows in a lot, and then stop watering except for once a week. Is this right? Okay. Got it.
And also, we are going to buy organic fertilizer. So maybe this will work. It's not as though we haven't asked every single place we go to buy our seed (Lowes or HD or Green Thumb or local nursery) and are always given a different answer. So this has been a real interesting journey! When we moved here over 3 years ago, we left a huge backyard with grass that was green all the time in all areas. It was in the Mojave desert. I really think that it's easier there to grow a beautiful lawn OR it's living next door to a park that is the problem...just too many different species of grass in there and they are fighting with each other!
Thanks again for all of your answers!

That's funny that you had better grass in the Mojave desert! I never would've thought that. Only problem with the desert is it can take a lot of water to keep it going during the July and August. Most people say to only water 1" a week total, but you easily have to double that during those two months where it's 100-110 outside.

Where in the Mojave were you at? What type of grass did you grow up there? Just curious...

And with the humidity you guys have down there, once a day watering is definitely too much. I would think that once a week could almost be too much as well, once it's established. What temp do you guys peak out at in the summer? I thought it would be 80's max if you're on the coast.

Now I know why I had such bad grades in geography! DH just informed me that we weren't in the "mojave desert." Since we had such high temps in summer/cold and frost in winter, I thought we were. We lived in Canyon Country, part of the Santa Clarita Valley, about 30 minutes from Palmdale, which is more Mojave. We had tall fescue there.

Also, in Aliso Viejo, we are 5 miles as the "crow flies" from the beach, but there is a mountain range that separates us and can make July/August sometimes as high as mid 90's. The beaches down south are much warmer than northern beaches in California (close to Mexico, etc). I agree about the humidity, tho, so watering less is something we have to start doing now. We still have that Canyon Country way of thinking when it comes to gardening!!
Thanks for the input!

One other factor that could be in play, or not. How much shade does the problem area get? Most grasses will not do well if they get too much shade, no matter what else you do to them.

I used a dye to cover dead spots in the lawn when our house was on the market. The grass was just no match for the dog's urine and we were left with yellow circles in the grass.

I mixed it up in a pump sprayer and only used it on the yellow areas. It was an emerald green color and did not match the grass, but in small areas and from a distance, it looked good and served its purpose. I managed to get the dye all over my white tennis shoes.