Let me get you started with the very basics of lawn care. Some of these may seem counter intuitive, but they are the general consensus of 12 years of Internet commentary on many different lawn care forums from amateur to professional.

Basics of Lawn Care

After reading numerous books and magazines on lawn care, caring for lawns at seven houses in my life, and reading numerous forums where real people write in to discuss their successes and failures, I have decided to side with the real people and dispense with the book and magazine authors. I don't know what star their planet rotates around but it's not mine. With that in mind, here is the collected wisdom of the Internet savvy homeowners and lawn care professionals summarized in a few words. If you follow the advice here you will have conquered at least 50% of all lawn problems. Once you have these three elements mastered, then you can worry about weeds (if you have any), dog spots, and striping your lawn. But if you are not doing these three things, they will be the first three things suggested for you to correct.

Watering
Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an inch in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. Do not spread this out and water for 10 minutes every day. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. If that does not work, then you might have to water more than once per week during the summer's hottest period. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds.

You will have to learn to judge when to water your own lawn. If you live in El Paso your watering will be different than if you live in Vermont. Adjust your watering to your type of grass, temperature, humidity, wind, and soil type. It is worth noting that this technique is used successfully by professionals in Phoenix, so...just sayin.' The other factors make a difference. If you normally water 1 inch per week and you get 1/2 inch of rain, then adjust and water only 1/2 inch that week.

Mowing
Every week mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. However, bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses will become the most dense when they are mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. In fact there are special mowers that can mow these grasses down to 1/16 inch. Dense grass shades out weeds, keeps the soil cooler, and uses less water than thin grass. Tall grass can feed the deep roots you developed in #1 above. Tall grass does not grow faster than short grass nor does it look shaggy sooner. Once all your grass is at the same height, tall grass just looks plush.

Fertilizing
Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 5 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above. Follow the directions on the bag and do not overdo it. Too much is better than too little*.

At this point you do not have to worry about weed and feed products - remember at this point you are just trying to grow grass, not perfect it. Besides once you are doing these three things correctly, your weed problems should go away without herbicide.

* This used to read, "Too little is better than too much." Recent test results show that you cannot get too much organic fertilizer unless you bury the grass in it.

So that covers what to do once you actually have a lawn. When you say you have really hot summers, are you talking about heat or humidity? Do you have temps in the 100s more than once a year like in Phoenix? Arkansas is not exactly my stomping grounds but I'd be surprised if a warm season grass would work well there. With that in mind the grasses that would do best would be Kentucky bluegrass and or fescues. Is shade a consideration on your lot? If you have areas with less than 6 hours of direct summer sunlight, then KBG will not work for you. Seeding those grasses is most successful when done in the early fall (late August for you). You might want to nurse your weed patch through the summer until fall and do it all right just one time. Or you might seed in early spring hoping to beat the crabgrass seed. The problems with spring seeding is the crabgrass seed is ready to sprout as well as the young grass normally has trouble developing tough roots to withstand the summer heat. The result is often a full crabgrass lawn by July. Whether it works like that or not, you can recover in the early fall with a blast of RoundUp and new seed. If you buy seed for a spring seeding, you can just use cheap seed. If you buy it for fall you might want to spend a little more to get higher quality seed. You do get what you pay for with seed.

Write back with your comments based on what I've started with and we can help you better.

Thanks for the quick and thorough response. As I stated, I haven’t had the house for a very long period so I have only been able to do one of the three items recommended and that would be mowing. I haven’t fertilized or watered. I will say that I will take up your recommendation of mowing on the highest level. I usually mow on the middle setting.

What I mean by hot is both heat and humidity. We get several days and sometimes weeks that hover in the mid-90s to 100. I do have a few areas that would not get 6 hours of direct light, however, most of the yard is in direct sunlight. The University of Arkansas Ag Center information that I obtained stated that Arkansas is in a transition zone meaning it is too hot for cool-season grasses to perform well and winter is often cold enough to injure or kill the warm-season varieties. They also state that Bermuda grass does well statewide. My father uses Bermuda grass and hasn’t had any issues. With all of that information, what would you recommend?

I like your idea of using a cheaper seed in the Spring and if that doesn’t work out using round-up and seeding with a better seed in the Fall. Which I should probably do whether it works out or not, correct? Would you recommend using round-up in the early spring before seeding with the cheaper seed as well?

You will want to educate yourself on the difference between cheap seed and "better" seed. There is reason that things are cheap. Like the efficiency rating of 55% of a cheap furnace.

Thanks for the response. What brands would you consider a good choice?

Brand is not as important as quality. Lower quality seed will contain a percentage of weed or other crop seeds. There are over a million seeds in a pound of many turf seeds (Bermuda for instance), so even 0.1% weed seed is 10,000 weed seeds per pound and depending on the turf type, you will need 2-5 pounds of seed per thousand square feet. Also, some turf grasses (TTTF and KBG, etc.) have been genetically engineered so that different cultivars have improved drought or disease resistance (check the NTEP). As dchall says, you get what you pay for. If your lawn is bare or very patchy and all you need is something that will hold the soil in place until the proper time of planting the type of turf seed you desire, then the weed content in cheap seed may not matter if you plan to kill it all off and reseed with quality seed. Otherwise, IMHO, just wait until the proper time for planting quality seed and forget using a cheap seed as a quick "fix."

Hello Vinylapple!

I think there are a few questions that need answered before we can give you solid advice on how to proceed. How many square feet is your lawn? Do you have an irrigation system? How much of your lawn is full sun(+6 hrs) and how much of it is shaded? What is your ultimate goal for the lawn (Best in the neighborhood, something easy to care for or just green lawn with minimal weeds or somewhere in between)? Most likely you will need to go with a Warm season grass(Bermuda, Zoysia, Centipede or St. Augustine) as those will perform best in your area. Where in Arkansas do you live, all we need is a city? We promise not to come hunt you down :) What is your budget for this new lawn and do you already have a mower, spreader and a pump sprayer?

Sorry for all the questions but I think the more info we have the better we can guide you to where you want to go. Now is a perfect time to get a plan together before the warmer weather gets here.

My lawn is probably around 20,000 square feet. I do not have an irrigation installed but it’s something I’m thinking about on down the line. I would say that 75% of my lawn gets +6 hours of direct sun a day and the rest is shaded. My goal is to have a nice lawn, not necessarily the best in the neighborhood that is easy to manage and weed free.

I’m thinking Bermuda will be good for the lawn but I worry about how it will be do the shady areas of. I do have a spreader, sprayer, and a push mower. (I need the exercise, lol). I have the funds set aside to get the lawn in good shape so the budget is not an issue right now. I live near Jonesboro, AR which is in the Northeastern corner of the state.

Vinylapple - I was a newbie here a year ago, and I can tell you that if you follow the steps people in this forum give you, you will automatically have the best lawn in the neighborhood. It will cost you less $ than hiring a lawn service and you will have a better result. If money isn't tight, the one thing you really need to "do it right" on such a large property is an underground irrigation system. That is probably the one thing that might make the difference between having the best lawn in the county, and just a decent lawn.

I don't want to sound like a negative nancy but with 20K of lawn to seed without an irrigation system is a monumental undertaking.

Your optimal time to seed will be in June when the temps are in the 80's consistently as bermuda seed needs a good amount of heat to germinate. You will be having to water the seed several times a day to keep it moist for at least a month if not more. You WILL have weeds that pop up so you will have to pull them by hand or live with them.

Could you post a few pictures of your lawn so we can see what we are working with? There may be more there to work with than you think there is. Have you thought about sodding the lawn?

I was thinking cool season grass, but with the high temps and humidity, perhaps bermuda or St Aug would work. If you want something green in the winter, then there are no warm season grasses that will work at your location. In the deep south they will remain green all winter, but not up there.

Lets talk about bermuda for a minute. I consider it a high maintenance turf grass simply because it needs to be mowed several times a week and monthly fertilizer. If you don't pay attention to those two aspects of care, then the turf will thin out and allow weeds to move in. Thin turf is the biggest reason for weeds. The saying goes, "Nature hates a bare spot." If you go with bermuda then you have two choices for quality and two choices for putting it town. The best quality bermuda lawn is a Tif hybrid. The most reasonable Tif is the 419 variety. It's been around as a sod choice for decades and is usually about half the cost of St Augustine sod. Unfortunately Tif does not go to seed so the only way to install is by sod. All the bermuda seeds are varieties of common bermuda. Some might be called hybrid but they are not Tif. When you have the two grasses mixed in with each other, to me the lawn looks weedy with the common bermuda being the weed. Bermuda has the advantage of a dormancy stage during total drought. It will come back quickly from a water shortage. Bermuda will thin out in less than 6 hours of sun light.

The other very popular warm season grass is St Augustine. Relative to bermuda, St Aug is no-hassle. It gets by on 3 fertilizer apps per year and can be mowed once a week (or much less). St Aug is coarse bladed grass which will shade out most of the grassy weeds, including bermuda, that might get into the lawn. It loves sun but also will perform in much less than 6 hours of sunlight. One flaw with St Aug is that prolonged drought will kill it. It needs some sort of water at least monthly. A hot dry spell (very low humidity) in the summer could kill out St Aug in direct sun. St Aug does not have seed so it must be installed by sod. Each piece costs about a dollar. St Aug will spread quickly when the temps are below 85 degrees. It moves about 1-2 feet per month when conditions permit. Usually that's spring and fall. Spreading 10 feet per year is very common. What this means is if you had some patience, you could put down several pieces of St Aug sod and encourage it to spread to fill and cover the entire lawn. The other flaw with St Aug is susceptibility to fungal disease. Some of the recent hybrid varieties are very good at resisting disease. The older varieties will just die from disease. The newer ones will send up new blades faster than the disease can kill the old ones. Treating is fairly easy with corn mean (yes, the kind you eat), so I don't consider this to be a major deal breaker with St Aug.

You can put down sod any day of the year although early spring might give better results. Bermuda seed MUST be put down in the heat of summer. So this differs from what I was thinking in my earlier message. It is made for heat, so all it does is get better all summer long. If you want some further reading on bermuda, find the Bermuda Bible online. It's short but very informative. If you are a little ambitious with DIY, you could look into sprigging a hybrid bermuda. That brings the cost down considerably. There's a guy from Australia who developed a method for home owners that worked well for him. He posted it here first (as far as I know). If you want more info on that, let me know. Start by searching this forum for 'sprigging, bermuda, Australia, dchall.' I can't remember his handle or I'd give you that to search. Basically he bought a few pieces of extremely expensive hybrid TIF, chopped them up in to sprigs, washed off the soil, and scattered them on the ground. He covered them with a light mulch and watered. A few weeks later he had a very inexpensive installation of a very expensive turf - sports variety TIF bermuda. There's more to the details, but that's the gist of it.