A "different" lawn
Now there's another option to consider, at least if your yard is sunny most of the time. Keep your lawn, but replace all the existing grasses with one of the new ultra low maintenance grass mixes. Once established, they should substantially reduce--though not eliminate--routine lawn maintenance...and you'll still have a green lawn to walk on and enjoy. Plus you'll reap the usual benefits a lawn provides, including water filtration, natural "air conditioning," trapping air pollutants, and a comfortable surface for children or pets to play on.

Several new low maintenance lawn mixes have been planted, then monitored for three years in research plots at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum and at the Waseca branch of the University's Agricultural Experiment Station. While no one would mistake the results for a highly maintained golf course or finely manicured lawn, some were considered "acceptable" by the crew of Extension personnel and Master Gardeners who evaluated them monthly throughout each growing season.

All these lawn mixes grow best in full sunlight or very light shade. They are not suited to dense shade or to poorly-drained, heavy clay soils. Among the best choices were blends of different fescues (grasses grown for their shade and drought tolerance) and seed mixes containing a combination of grasses and some small broad-leaf or flowering plants such as clover. If you think of clover as a weed, stick with the fescue blends. If you can accept the concept of a lawn as a "community" of different plants, you might enjoy the mixes that include clover and other small flowers.

Plan any time, but plant in fall
Eliminate all weeds prior to planting. This may take from several weeks to several months, depending on how you go about it. For the University trials, everything was killed with glyphosate (RoundUp). If you want to avoid using herbicides, rent a sod cutter and scrape the upper two to three inches of grass and soil shortly before planting. The seed bed must be smooth and free of clumps, as well as weed-free. Incorporate one pound of 10-10-10 fertilizer per thousand square feet you'll be seeding.

Though technically you could plant these mixes in spring or fall, your job will be easier and your results, better, if you plant between mid-August and mid-September. In spring, any weed seeds that are churned up in the planting process will compete with desired seeds for moisture and nutrients, whereas in fall, most weed seeds won't sprout. By the following spring your low maintenance lawn will have had such a good head start it will prevent most weed seeds from getting a toe-hold.

Routine maintenance
Water daily while seedlings are developing, but once the lawn becomes established you'll only need to water occasionally, during periods of hot, dry weather. Fertilize sparingly, if at all. When necessary, use a balanced (equal parts nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) slow-release fertilizer in early spring. High nitrogen lawn fertilizers encourage top growth--not what you want when you're trying to avoid mowing.

Mowing frequency depends on how you'd like the lawn to look. You'll probably want to mow it to four inches when seed heads develop towards the end of spring. Then you can mow monthly--again, to four inches--or simply leave it alone. It should not grow much taller than about six inches, and depending on which mix you use, the grasses will often bend gracefully, presenting a relatively low profile.

It's important that you rake the leaves off your ultra low maintenance lawn each fall. If you haven't got many leaves, you can just run over them with a mulching mower so that tiny leaf chips filter down and recycle some nutrients to the soil.