I don't know what I was doing in April, but I missed your post.

Where do you live? Don't need the zone, just the town. Since you said coastal, I'm assuming you are west of I-5 and 405.

It looks and sounds like you are watering too frequently and not deep enough. If you are west of I-5 your watering should be more like once every 2 weeks and an inch at a time. time how long it takes your sprinklers to put out 1 inch by placing tuna or cat food cans around the yard. Turn on the sprinklers and when the last one is full, that is your new watering time. Then it is just a matter of frequency. Frequency is based on daytime air temp. If you live in the coastal morning fog region (3 miles from the beach), then you have to mod this a little. If you live outside the morning fog zone, then with temps in the 90s you should deep water once a week. With temps in the 80s, water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, water once a month. Yes, I realize that every sprinkler system installer and landscaper in California will come after me for saying that, but TRY IT. It works in Phoenix, so it should work in Oceanside. Use that as a guide, but there should never be a time when you need to water more than once a week.

If you have trouble getting water to soak in, spray the lawn with shampoo at a rate of 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Follow that up with deep watering to take the shampoo down deep into the soil. What this does is allow moisture to go many feet deeper than it is currently going. That will cool the soil, reduce transpiration and evaporation, allow moisture to provide to the roots for a longer time, allow the roots to grow deeper, and create a much better environment for your soil biology. It helps make the deep watering work.

Marathon is a "dwarf" type fescue. This does not mean it has limited growth. It means it grows so slowly that it seems like it isn't growing. This is especially true in the summer heat. For grass on a south or west facing slope, you might need to syringe the turf in the afternoon heat. This is simply misting the grass to cool it off. This is not deep watering. I'm talking about a foliar spray only. Think Santa Ana winds and heat. You're just cooling the grass.

If you think you have clay, you should send a sample in to Logan Labs in Ohio for a test. Get the $25 test. They will email you results which you can post here for comments. Over the years the percentage of people who believe they have clay and actually have a salt imbalance is about 90%. Logan Labs can tell you that. The standard UC Riverside or Davis soil test does not tell you that. You have to pay extra to get the right tests from them.

Now, having gone through that, if you come back to say you live east of I-15, I'm going to come crashing down on you for fibbing about being coastal. Coastal means fog zone to me. La Jolla. San Clemente. Dana Point. If you live in Escondido or Vista, then you should fire your yard guy, because you have no business with Marathon fescue with temps that high. Marathon can be made to work but it takes daily watering in the summer. California does not have that much water left to coddle all the Marathon it already has. In that case you should have either UC Verde buffalo or hybrid TIFF 409 bermuda in full sun, or St Augustine in partial shade. If it is only ornamental you could use zoysia. If you cannot make the Marathon work on your yard watering once a week, then you need to go to a more water wise choice.

I sincerely appreciate your detailed and thorough response. To answer your first question, I live in Laguna Beach and I live about 4,500 to the ocean in a south westerly direction. I am in a canyon so the sun really doesn't hit hard until late morning, even on warm days, because the sun has to rise over the mountains (that form the canyon) behind the house away from the water. I hope that makes sense. I get morning fog and June gloom, etc.

I hear you with regards to water 1" at a time (at most once a week) and it is my intention to put out containers to accurately gauge how long that is.

With regards to the shampoo, I feel like the water soaks in. If a put a 12 inch moisture probe into the ground, it is completely wet but if i just put it in the a couple of inches, it is somewhere in the middle. Not sure if I need the shampoo treatment, but it seems like it couldn't hurt?

It might be important to point out that my sprinkler controller (Rachio) has a Smart Soak feature so if I set it to water for say 25 minutes, it will water for 5, turn off for 30, water for an additional 5, turn off for 30, etc. until it has watered for the full 25 minutes.

So, during the summer we might be in the 80's or 90's, but it is still relatively cool in the morning so considering that, water every 2 weeks during the summer? Then in the cooler months where it is likely in the 70's most of the time, every 3 weeks? It doesn't seem enough...

Going back to my original post, I mentioned that the two rows of sod along the sidewalk died. I asked the gardener and he said "it got burnt." Not exactly sure what that means but I felt like I wasn't watering enough...

With regards to my soil, I am pretty certain it is clay. I did a home PH test in the past because I was going to put gypsum down to help break up the clay, but after doing the test, it seemed like it wasn't needed.

Any more thoughts considering my above comments? THANK YOU again BTW. It is sincerely appreciated.

Excellent! You actually are coastal. If you get morning fog, you should be okay with the Marathon. But then you said canyon. Are you in the canyon where they (used to) have the art festival? I remember that as being really hot in the summer. But anyway...

Shampoo cannot hurt. You cannot mess that up even if you apply an entire bottle per 1,000 square feet. It all helps it to soak in. Cost is about a dollar, so give it a try. It takes the place of conventional core aeration, which costs much more than a dollar.

Also if I have not already mentioned it, I would apply an organic fertilizer at least once a year to help keep the soil microbes happy. I use alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) at a rate of 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. I get them at the feed store for about $12 per 50-pound bag. That is in Texas dollars, not California dollars. I see Laguna Koi Ponds on 133 near the freeway. Koi food is alfalfa pellets, but I think the price is higher than it is for rabbit food. You can use any ground up nut, bean, seed, or grain. That means cornmeal, wheat flour, cottonseed meal, soybean meal, or anything the feed store has, as long as it is ground up. Otherwise you may have a field of corn. These really work to improve grass density, growth, and color; but they take a full 3 weeks to see the improvement. I have used nothing but since 2002. If you look at the ingredients on a bag of organic fertilizer, you will see the same ingredients as I have listed. When you buy from the feed store, the cost is about 1/6 of what it costs in a commercially bagged organic fertilizer like Espoma. These feeds do not bring in the wild animals. We have 1,000 deer in our neighborhood, and when I toss corn meal out, they don't seem to be interested.

As for the burned grass: concrete will absorb heat all day on a sunny day. Then all night it remains warm and helps to dry out the soil nearby. That's why the grass near the concrete needs more moisture. Another issue that can crop up near concrete is chinch bugs. They love the heat and will find their niche near the concrete first before spreading out into the yard. The warm corner of a sidewalk and a driveway is often their first habitat. So between the warm concrete and the chinch bugs, grass near the driveway can suffer. Start by deep watering that area more frequently. A soaker hose can help, but so can the shampoo treatment.

Yes, with temps in the 80s water once every 2 weeks. When it slips into the 90s, then move to once per week. This is a guide. The main purpose is to discourage people from watering daily like everyone in California and Florida want to do. Where I live, in the Texas Hill Country, temps have not broken 100 yet, but we have been lucky to have rain parsed out in intervals such that I have not watered my front yard yet. The back yard slopes to the south and has no shade. I have watered it twice this year. We haven't had rain in a couple weeks and today the wind shifted to a dry wind from the north, so I'm probably going to end up watering front and back this weekend. I have a St Augustine lawn, so you cannot exactly compare mine with yours, but the point is you don't need to water every frickin' day.

Adding gypsum might help if you do have a clay problem, but if you have a magnesium problem, then the gypsum might not help. That is what the Logan Labs soil test will tell you. It will tell you the cation exchange capacity (the ability of the soil to grab onto nutrients) as well as all the salt values. Soils with a CEC nearing 20 are more like clay while a CEC around 5 is more like gravel or sand. That says that clay can hold nutrients better than sand can. But clay also has other properties that cause problems for growing. On the other hand, magnesium, the main ingredient in Epsom Salt, has the property of binding soil particles together. You can add magnesium to sand and make it become gummy just like clay. Thus if you or a previous owner happened to get happy with Epsom Salt on the soil, then you might not have any clay at all. The "cure" for that is to find out what the rest of the salt levels are (sodium, potassium, and calcium) and to balance the ratios. Again, Logan Labs tells you all that. Post the results here and you'll get about $200 worth of free, personalized, soil test reading information.

All great information. Thank you again.

I am not in the canyon where the festival is. I am in Bluebird Canyon if that provides any reference to you. It is higher up and I think it's cooler than in the canyon you referred to. The air from the ocean blows up through Bluebird Canyon and over the mountain. Most of the time we're below 80, but there are days above. Today for example, it is a sunny 72 degrees.

You brought up a point regarding fertilizers. My gardener had recommended I use Triple 15 (15-15-15) every 6 weeks and core aerate once per year (which I do by hand). Should I continue to fertilize like that? I have a huge bag of 15-15-15. Maybe do that and also spread the alfalfa pellets once per year? Alfalfa pellets aren't really ground up, is that ok?

On a side note, since you've been so informative, you mentioned rabbits. Should I be concerned at all about how much rabbits love the lawn. Many rabbits are in my yard, every day, eating and pooping all over the grass. I never thought it'd be an issue, but someone told me it could be with them urinating on the grass. Not sure..

To summarize so far, subject to your answers to the above, my plan is to do the following:

1) Water 1" of water at every watering and water AT MOST once per week, but realistically once every 2 weeks most of the time.

2) Shampoo the grass

3) Send in the test kit and test the soil and the lab you recommended. (can't hurt to know for sure)

4) Water/soak the edge of the grass near the concrete a bit more often due to the heat of the concrete.

5) Adjust fertilizing strategy based on your answer to the above

I am in Bluebird Canyon if that provides any reference to you.

Not really. When I lived in the area Laguna Beach was a pretty sleepy place. Buebird Canyon was not a place then. The greeter was an actual homeless looking eccentric phenom standing on the corner. Now he's a statue. The area started getting busy in the 70s, and now look at it. Unrecognizable.

Triple 15 is what you tell someone when you don't have anything better to say. Every 6 weeks is what you tell a customer when you have a boat payment due every month. Here's what is recommended on the lawn care forums. First dose of fertilizer goes down in May toward the end of the month. If you apply earlier it forces the grass to deplete the store of nutrients saved in the roots over the winter. I usually just say Memorial Day. Second app of the year is Labor Day. Third and final app goes down long about Thanksgiving or after the grass has stopped growing but before the frost hits. For you that might be December before the grass stops. That last app is the winterizer dose of high N, fast release. That means something like a 46-0-0 urea fertilizer. There can be a problem with applying a triple 15 in the heat of summer, but it doesn't seem like you have a heat of summer. Don't apply synthetic fertilizer during a Santa Ana Winds event. You can apply organic fertilizer any day, or every day, of the year without fear of damaging anything. You can even apply the same day as you apply synthetic fertilizer. Once you get the soil test back, that will change (your step 5, above). If he was a smart guy he would charge you $30 for a soil test and send it to Logan Labs for you. Then if he was a little smarter he could give you a real recommendation for what to apply. Soil chemistry is not simple. I don't understand most of it, but fortunately it seems to come easy to some folks here.

You have bunnies!!?? Do they eat your lawn? As for rabbit urine, in order to conserve body fluids they have a more concentrated urine than most other mammals. This is more true for desert adapted hares (jack rabbits) than for more temperate ones. That means it is more viscous and dense with nutrients. Desert rodents only drop a drop of concentrated urine. Apparently you are not seeing any damage. Do you have pictures of any spots you might be concerned about? The problem with dog urine is the sudden dose of nitrogen, in the form of urine, overwhelms the soil microbes, and they cannot process it fast enough. Result is that some of it burns the plant and roots. The solution for dog urine is to apply something like table sugar or molasses. Sounds weird, but the theory is that the sugar puts the microbes into reproductive mode. Once the population of microbes is vastly increased, then they can handle the urine as fast as it comes. In my yard the sugar treatment resulted in very deep green, tall, and dense grass. It was just like I had spot treated with an organic fertilizer - and that was in January when the rest of the yard was dormant. If you have a concern for rabbits in your yard, the application rate for molasses is 3 ounces per 1,000 square feet. You cannot overdo it, though. That rate is the same as 1 gallon per acre taken from how the ranchers use it. Sometimes they will do 2 gallons per acre. Crazy ranchers. Back to rabbits. Usually if they are given a free choice rabbits will eat fresh greens before they eat dry alfalfa pellets. Here's how you apply the pellets. After you drop them, wet them with a mist from either a sprinkler or hose. They only have to get wet. They will swell and burst into a greenish worm of packed alfalfa flakes. Then take a hose or back or a rake to drag over the lawn. That will break up the alfalfa worms and settle them down into the grass on the soil. If your feed store has alfalfa meal, then you can skip the special instructions. I toss pellets by hand for my relatively small yard of 3,000 square feet. Once the flakes or meal is down on the soil, the microbes will take over to decompose the food into plant food. I just got a note from a guy in Houston I've been helping solve a lawn issue. He needed to apply corn meal to take care of a disease. He has reported that the disease disappeared and that, " Lawn has never been this dense before I started the cornmeal n alfalfa diet ." That has been my experience, too. Having said that, we have St Augustine grass. Your experience with Marathon may be different.

The shampoo takes the place of core aerating. The method got started on golf courses which are "plagued" with all sorts of organic issues. They water lightly every day and sometimes more than once a day. On the greens this leads to a fungal development which happens to be hydrophobic repelling water. They have tried many approaches to getting more water into the soil, and one was to use a surfactant like a concentrated shampoo. A side effect of the surfactant treatment was that the soil became softer underfoot. Water penetrates better and the soil becomes soft. That's exactly what the goal of core aerating is. Core aerating never seems to achieve either one of those goals, but shampoo does.

Update:

So I tested the coverage by putting containers out and determined that to get 1.5", I needed to water for 18 minutes once per week. I have done that. Average high temperature this summer has been 84 degrees +/-. I shampooed as well.

The grass is starting to look worse. See photos below. It is set to water again tomorrow and I've increased the watering time to 23 minutes to give it a bit more in case there are certain coverage issues that are hard to spot.

Today, 6 days after the last watering, I stuck my 1' probe into the ground and right at the surface, it went up all the way wet, but down 1', it was much drier.

Regarding fertilizer, I was going to put down 15-20 lbs of alfalfa pellets per 1000 SF around labor day and every year thereafter. In May and also on Memorial day, I will be putting down the Triply 15.

The only thing I haven't done yet is get my soil tested.

My question relates to the condition of my yard now. You said with temperatures in the 80's, it should be 1.5" of water every 2 weeks or water every 2 weeks and in the 90's water ever week. I have been watering every week and it seems like it is not enough...

Just to nitpick, I said 1 inch per watering period, but that doesn't matter here. It's dry. Are you absolutely certain it only takes 18 minutes to fill the cat food cans? I know there are high flow sprinklers, but the fastest can fill I've heard of was 24 minutes. He ended up changing all his sprinkler heads to low flow to slow down the watering. What was happening was it was all running off and not soaking in. He also changed to watering for 10 minutes, waiting 30. watering 10, and so on until he got the 1 inch. He has a flat yard and you have a sloped yard which is obviously more subject to runoff. The shampoo will help a lot, but you might consider cycling your watering for better penetration.

You said the soil looks moist at depth. Did you check at the dry spots or the green spots? If you run the watering can filling test again, be sure to have some cans at the dry spots.

Sorry, I meant 1". Actually in some places it was more and some less so I made sure it went to at least 1" in all the containers. For reference, in certain containers it was 2".

My sprinkler controller has a Smart Soak feature which does 3-5 minutes on and 30 minutes off to prevent run-off. If I look in the history, it states I ran my sprinklers for 233 minutes today. 3 minutes on, then 30 minutes soaking until I reached 23 minutes of watering. It's a feature in the Rachio controller.

Regarding my yard, it is perfectly flat, not sloped at all. Maybe it was the angle in my photos that looked like that.

Yesterday, at 1 ft. deep, my moisture probe said dry, but at 3 inches deep, it said wet. I only checked that in the dry looking areas, not in the green areas. Considering all this and your comments, it seems that I am just not watering enough considering the heat.

Next week, I will run for 25 minutes total and I will put the cans out again and specifically look in the dry areas to check to see how much water hit that area. If there is anything else to report back, I will let you know. THANK YOU again.

Did you shampoo the grass yet? Regardless, do it again. Follow up with 1 inch of irrigation to get the shampoo to soak down deeper. You should have some moisture at a foot deep. Fescue roots should go that deep, and so should the moisture.

In the last few days, I have shampooed again and I fertilized with alfalfa pellets. I am also going to be taking soil samples in the next week or so to send to Logan Labs. (I'll let you know the results)

I also watered this morning, for 23 minutes and put out some containers. You were right. In one the dry areas, I was getting about 3/4". I watered those two areas a bit more after it was done and changed the water time to 30 minutes for next Friday.

Going back to your original suggestion, you stated that I should water 1" every 2 weeks if the temperature is in the 80's. Well it is in the 80's and I have been doing once a week. Maybe I should increase the watering time to say 40 minutes and then wait 2 weeks? Or, keep it as-is for now since it has felt hot, but when it does get cooler into the winter, I should definitely switch to 1" every 2 weeks?

On a quick side note, I was at Lowes looking to buy plugs to repair some gopher damage in the grass, but you can't really buy Marathon II there. The only option was St Augustine. I looked for Marathon grass seed and it's $20 for 1 lb of seed! It's also tough to grow from seed because I would have to water quite a bit more to get it going. Would St. Augustine blend well? Any suggestions here?

St Augustine will wipe out the fescue. It will march through it like Godzilla to the poor fescue Tokyoians. It spreads steadily at a rate of 15 feet per year in all directions. A few plugs strategically placed will give you a full St Aug lawn in a few years. I would put up a metal barrier between the grass and flower beds to help keep the St Augustine from growing into them. You may have noticed that St Augustine is a much more coarse bladed grass than Marathon. If you can deal with that, then I would suggest converting to St Augustine. St Aug will get much more dense than the Marathon which practically eliminates weeds. It can easily go 2 weeks without water while temps are in the 80s. It is a warm season grass that will go dormant in the winter if you have temps lower than 35 or so. At Laguna you may never see temps like that and could expect to mow all year long. If I moved back to SoCal I would definitely have a St Augustine lawn...or UC Verde Buffalo grass. I'm allergic to buffalo grass but UC Verde doesn't have flowers or seeds, so it should be no problem for me. But St Augustine should eliminate all your issues with the lawn.

Use my watering suggestions as a guide. The idea is to stretch out the frequency by watering more deeply. Frequent watering causes many more issues than withholding water, so going with a more southern variety helps with that. Fescues are more of a cool season grass which thrives in temps in the low 70s and much lower, so trying to grow Marathon in SoCal is sort of violating the first rule of gardening (grow plants acclimated to your location). Fescue is more of a battle to grow. St Augustine is more relaxing because it is adapted to the area. For an area like yours all you need is a string trimmer to keep it "mowed."

So I received the results back from Logan Labs. No recommendations, but before I pay for that, I thought I would post this here and see what you think..

I've asked morpheuspa to look at this. I have a feeling he's going to want to tweak this due to the high calcium and pH. It certainly appears to be clayey but with more organic matter than usually seen. You're not going to need to add calcium or magnesium (Epsom Salts)...ever.

I don't know how I missed this, and I'm not getting notifications from Houzz, either. Nor e-mail. But I did see it this time.

I'm not horribly worked up over the report. And next time, just get the basic one. It's really all you ever need and saves you money.

Soil Depth 6: 4 is the standard, so I'll adjust appropriately behind the scenes.

ME 25.5: No. It's being thrown way off by the calcium in the soil and the magnesium (to a much lesser extent). Figure 20. You might have a nice ALO Clay. A little research shows that's possible for the Laguna Beach area, as are the Clay Loam types, Sandy Clay, and so on. I'm really hesitant to call this a pure clay, though a jar test might be in order if you feel like doing one at home just for fun. It's not vastly accurate, but will give you some idea--in your case, use vinegar and don't seal the jar.

pH 8.0: High, but not a barrier to a great lawn. Grasses really don't care about pH that high, they just won't show the best color and may benefit from sprayed iron. Or, more easily and simply, ignore it and accept a paler grass color.

Organic Matter 5%: Excellent! Certainly mulch mow, but no special effort is required here.

Sulfur 38: Normal.

Phosphorus 589: P isn't very available at high pH, but this is more than high enough that it isn't a major issue. You wouldn't want to intentionally send it any higher.

Calcium 72%: Surprisingly nice looking. It's inflating your ME, so it's really rather high, but no big deal.

Magnesium 19%: You don't want to add any, but it's not excessive.

Potassium 3.6%: By the numbers, a tad low, but not worth doing anything about, really.

Sodium 1%: Normal. Nudging a tad high and worth keeping an eye on to make sure it doesn't go up, but it does tend to be a little high in areas close to the ocean. If you're near to it, that explains it. If not, your soil might be just a tad sodic and that's sending the pH up a little.

Minor Elements: All good. Iron at 151 isn't going to produce good color at a pH of 8.0, but Iron at 1,000 wouldn't produce good color at a pH of 8.0. Still, if you want to feed with Milorganite or other high-iron feeding, it would help--and the iron sulfate just might, theoretically, possibly, nudge that pH down to 7.9 in 20 years or so.

Recommendations:

Feed normally with any high-nitrogen or organic fertilizer at the correct times for your area. In California, I'm not terribly sure when that is, but fescues will tend to prefer 2-4 pounds of nitrogen per year if synthetic, and flourish best near the upper end of that range. Organically, the measurements get a little more opaque, but I can give you my yardstick, if you want.

As noted, high iron would be great, but isn't necessary.

First off, thank you for the detailed comments.

I followed the advice from the Logan Labs recommendation combined with your comments and the grass is really not looking very good. Maybe it is just some growing pains since I did the changes, but not sure. My smart sprinkler controller (Rachio 3) for the last couple weeks did this Saturation Skip, but since the grass wasn't looking good, I elected to water it anyway based on your recommendations.

When I put my moisture probe (0-9 range) into the ground 2 inches, the probe goes to 2-3. When I put it in 4 inches, it goes to 5-6. When I put it in 6+ inches, it goes to 9 or the max. I feel like it's getting enough water. It has been dry in California lately and a bit windy but clearly the soil has moisture.

Based on my understanding of the soil test, it does seem like the water doesn't drain very well (higher than normal calcium) partially because of the clay soil, but there is not much I can do there other than completely starting over (which I have considered). I've shampooed twice, fertilized with alfalfa pellets in August, aerated pretty recently (when I did the Logan Labs recommendations) and water it 1 inch per week (25+ minutes per week) which you said could even be too much since it rarely gets that hot here...

I tried to add a photo, but it doesn't seem to let me... One more time..

I agree this is not working. So what is your current watering? How often and for how long? How long was the transition from your previous watering to the current watering? It could be you jumped into deep and infrequent before the roots could catch up.

Something is going on at the sprinkler heads. If you look back at your first pictures, the grass was dry right there. Looking at these, it is still dry. Are the sprinklers shooting out over the area immediately adjacent and not getting that area wet? Do the sprinklers overlap at the sprinkler heads?

I am watering for 25 minutes once a week, every Friday morning. When you said to change it up, I immediately went from 2-3 days a week of shorter waterings to one long one once a week.

When I put the moisture probe into the ground, it says it's wet, especially as it goes deeper into the ground. I have 2 moisture probes and they say the same thing. The attached picture is a bit older because I wanted you to see entire area. I have a 10x10 area with 4 sprinklers, one at each corner, and a I have a 20x10 area (shown here) with the sprinklers where the red circles are. They overlap. Everything is getting watered.

Maybe it's just not enough, but it hasn't been hot at all. On Sunday, the high was 70 degrees so you said water 1 inch every 2 weeks when it is that cold. There is moisture/fog in the air in the mornings too. I bet you on Thursday of this week, right before I water, I will put the moisture probe in and it will say it's moist. Maybe I can't trust that because of the clay soil and I need to just water more? Like 35 minutes every Friday morning. Maybe keep it at 25 minutes and then hand water everything as well, just to make sure every part of the grass is getting watered...

One thing to add is that I haven't had to mow this for well over a month, maybe 2. Marathon II grows really slow, but it's virtually maintenance free as it relates to mowing..

Yes the Marathon family is a so-called dwarf variety because it grows so slowly. I'm not a huge fan of hardware store soil tests and tools, but I think your moisture meter is telling you the truth here. The problem is the grass roots are not as deep as you are probing. The moisture is there, but too deep for the roots. I wonder if Marathon has the ability to grow deeper roots?

Going from 2-3 times to once a week should not have been a problem, but maybe it was???

Can you get down and take a picture from 3-6 inches away? Take it so we can see the poor looking grass as well as the seemingly healthy looking grass if you can.

Here is a closeup. The good grass close up is taken along the back edge where I put the yellow circle. I would think it is a bit more shady along that edge because of the fence and the other plants there.

I do recall my old gardener said that it got 'burned' when my sod dried up for the first time. Since I seem to be watering enough, how do I prevent it from getting burned unless I just water more often? This is the people who sell Marathon, this didn't really help me but maybe your experienced eye might have more luck?

https://sod.com/irrigation/

Not sure about root depth, but you're right, it doesn't seem to go very deep. The only thing I can think of us to water more often OR water longer OR both. My Rachio 3 sprinkler system keeps lowering the minutes each month and I have been manually keeping them higher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUDub7m3cU

Morph??? What the hell?

Okay your grass is badly diseased. Since cornmeal does not seem to work on fescue, I would suggest getting a recommendation from the people who installed it. Take one of those blades that is covered in black lesions (first picture) and yellow lesions (second picture) to them. They have probably seen it before. The reason the grass looks bad after a few days is due to the disease preventing or slowing the uptake of moisture. There's moisture in the soil, but the roots aren't working right.

If this was St Augustine I would say the problem was from watering too frequently. You're so close to the coastal breeze, I really think you can back way off on the watering frequency. Rachio is not the best system unless you insist on watering more frequently than the online lawn community is recommending.

Are you getting fog?

I live west of interstate 5 in Los Angeles about 3 miles from the Pacific Ocean. My backyard is now mostly dirt and i want to plant some Marathon II. Should I wait for spring or is it something I can do during our S. Calif mild winter?

It's a fescue, so your "winter" (you call that a winter?) is a good time to plant, rather than your rather brutal summers. As to whether the grass is a good choice there may be another question.

At 3 miles from the beach, the summers are not brutal. I lived off of Aviation Blvd and needed a jacket in the summers.

NOW is the time if you are going to seed it. Your rainy season is upon you. Spray with Round Up now and give it a week to kill anything that might be growing. If you have holes or low spots, fill them being sure to not block drainage around the house. You don't want rainwater backing up into the house or crawlspace underneath. Then seed or sod.

I see this was posted awhile ago and not sure if you still have your marathon sod, but based on what you said its's not getting enough water. Here is the recommended watering and fertilizing schedule from Southland Sod farms (scroll down for established marathon): http://www.west.net/~marathon/marathon_sod_maintenance.html#:~:text=Watering%20New%20Marathon%20Sod&text=To%20keep%20it%20that%20way,every%20two%20or%20three%20days.

I work in landscaping and this is the recommended watering schedule we provide our customers.

Part of the problem, Tracey, is that for decades, landscapers have been installing Marathon turf irresponsibly. Marathon is a cool season grass and should not be grown where it needs excessive amounts of water to keep it alive. The coastal and high altitude parts of SoCal could be considered as 'transition zone,' but most if it is warm season and should only have warm season grass types installed.

I think Las Vegas is a good experiment in socially responsible gardening with the demand to remove turf grass. However, I believe that ordinance will have unexpected consequences to the region. We shall see soon enough.

We are starting to see some shifts to more waterwise, drought tolerant options, including an emphasis on natives. However, we also have to contend with what consumers want, and many still want sod. I frequently recommend St. Augustine, a warm season grass, but people request Marathon II because of its look and feel. So demand for marathon remains high even with the drought and despite its need for more water.

Thanks for that. After 40 years people are conditioned to want Marathon.