Help turn my front lawn from an eye-sore into, uh, not one.

One thing most people do wrong is cut their lawn too short. Grass is a weed, basically, but it's a uniform-looking weed that people seem to like. The problem is, if you cut it too short, the other weeds, which don't grow nice and thick and lush, will grow faster and overpower it. We set our mower to it's highest setting, which is about 4". I know some cities have zoning that requires lawn be no higher than a certain height- often as short as 6"- but no one's going to blow the whistle on you if you mow it regularly and it doesn't look unkempt. If you're mowing to 4" you shouldn't let it get higher than 6" between mowings, anyway.

Letting the lawn grow out will make it thicker, lusher, less susceptible to drought, and require way less fertilizer, water, pesticides...and work and money.

As for the current situation- rent a tiller, go over it really shallow- like maybe the top inch or so of soil, to loosen. Sprinkle an inch or so of topsoil over it, then use a broadcast spreader to put down fresh seed. Keep it well- watered until it's tall enough to mow (about 6"). Then gradually taper off on the watering.

If you water and fertilize your lawn, you'll have to keep watering and fertilizing.

Ask your neighbor? I'm sure he'd be happy to tell you what you are doing wrong. Lol.

Sorry, nothing constructive.

Another vote for getting your soil tested. I bought a $4 kit at Home Depot and tested mine this year to find that my soil was incredibly alkaline (pH of 8+) so instead of lime I have been speading iron and sulpher and already the results are FAR better than I used to get.

But knowledge is power, without knowing what you need you are simply throwing your money away.

Start a compost pile. Filch your neighbor's fall leaves and grass clippings for it. See if there's a local stable where you can get horse manure for it, too. Manure + compost + water next year to build up the soil. Add grass seed the following year.

stroker wrote: Start a compost pile. Filch your neighbor's fall leaves and grass clippings for it. See if there's a local stable where you can get horse manure for it, too. Manure + compost + water next year to build up the soil. Add grass seed the following year.

Take this advice and I will give you all the horse manure you want.

have you given thought to wildflowers instead of grass? almost no maintenance (they are a weed after all) no mowing, and they are very pretty and give homes to helpful insects

How is the soil? The sandy part probably helps you here, but if you take a shovel and punch into the soil, how deep does it go? Is the soil loose and soft, or hard and compacted? If its hard, rent a lawn aerator. Get the kind that does cores, not just a needle or spike roller. Get one like this:

Do it a few days after a rain or while the ground is moist or it will just be a pain. Your lawn will look like it has 6000 dog turds in it, but the next good rain will 1) wash those away, and 2) allow the ground to swell into those holes significantly loosening the soil.

If you soil is already really soft, you should test for pH and fungus. Those brown spots look fungus-y to me. (a mold-like stuff that grows in the thatch and kills grass) You won't see it, but its there. Often times aeration will cure a lot of ills without any other work. Letting oxygen in the soil often changes the pH and soil composition enough that no further chemicals are needed. Non-aerated soil tends to favor anaerobic bacteria which make a lot of ammonia compounds and raise the pH making it favorable for the fungus. That is why I suggest testing, aeration, retesting, then chemical adjustments if necessary.

Once you get the soil fixed up, seed with a good mix and enjoy.

I agree with Curtis and a few others. I suspect fungus. There's a patch in the backyard, the only heavily shaded part, that has looked like this since we moved in. The front yard is a recentish thing. I'm going to test the soil for sure. And I have thought a lot about a ground cover that doesn't need mowing, or a wild landscape.
We've called three local landscape/gardeners to have them come out and asses it so we could pay them to fixify it. They never showed up. I don't want/need the nicest lawn on the block, but this looks like crap now.

A old hippie guy in my neighborhood put up signs in his yard that it was a biological research area. He gets out of mowing his lawn that way. It looks like a rat nest but it seems to work for him.