There just is no perfect grass for this area. You can grow a cool- or warm-season grass but neither will look good year-round because we live in a transitional zone that's between the northern and southern climates.

You first have to decide which of the two types of grass you want. Cool-season grasses - Kentucky 31, Rebel, Titan, Bonanza and many others - look their best during the fall and spring months when there are cool temperatures and plentiful rains. A severe winter, however, can cause the lawn to lose color. Tall turf-type fescues are coarser, bunch-like grasses, while fine fescues have the slimmest blades around.

Fescue lawns need lots of water - an inch a week - during the summer months when it's dry and hot, but tolerant homeowners can just let them go naturally dormant and they will rebound once cooler weather arrives in the fall.

Warm-season lawns - Bermuda, Zoysia, Centipede and St. Augustine - look lush and healthy when the fescue lawns appear stressed. This warm-season vigor usually lasts only during the warmest months. Cool fall weather will send warm-season grasses into dormancy, and the first frost will turn them brown. They, too, require deep waterings May through June but tolerate heat and drought better than fescues. You can overseed Bermuda with an annual ryegrass to get winter color; Zoysia does not lend itself to overseeding.

The best quality warm-season grasses should be planted vegetatively using sprigs or plugs or laid as sod; common Bermuda and common zoysia can be seeded. Common Bermuda and Raleigh St. Augustine tolerate salt sprays at waterfront locations.

Fescues - cool-season grasses - are generally more plentiful in Hampton Roads, but both cool- and warm-season lawns can grow in this area.

It may sound ideal to plant some of each, to get the benefits of both, but it's not advisable. The turfs have different cultivation and maintenance requirements.

Which type you choose will determine your lawn-care plan.

To establish or renovate a cool-season fescue lawn, you should aerate, seed and fertilize in the fall. The cool months will allow the roots to establish themselves before the next summer's heat and humidity stresses the grass.

Warm-season grasses need most of their attention in the spring.

However, if you have a bare yard in the spring, you should sow grass, even fescue, as early as possible to prevent soil erosion. The turf can then be rejuvenated and improved in the fall so it grows even stronger and thicker over the following winter.

Before you install a cool- or warm-season turf, there is some common preparation that should be done.

SOIL PREPARATION

A soil test will help the you know if the soil in your lawn needs additional nutrients and if the pH of the soil is right for the planned turf. Nutrients important to the soil for root development include phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium; nitrogen stimulates green vegetative growth. A soil pH of 6.2 to 6.5 is best for fescue lawns in Hampton Roads.

Virginia Cooperative Extension offices offer soil testing kits for $7. Homeowners can send a soil sample to Virginia Tech for analysis and receive back a report that will tell them what kind of nutrients to add in what quantities. Fall is the best time to take a soil test so you can amend your lawn over the winter.

If you don't want to do a soil test and your yard hasn't received lime in 18 months, the extension service recommends applying 80 pounds of ground limestone per 1,000 square feet of lawn area.

If the lawn is a totally new one, the soil should be graded so drainage slopes away from the house. The soil surface should be smooth and free of rocks and construction debris.

If your lawn is heavily infested with weeds - about 40 to 60 percent of it - or if you have lots of bare soil showing, it's time to totally redo the turf.

To replace a shabby and weed-infested fescue lawn, you should use an herbicide to kill everything - foliage and roots - to rid the soil of any growing matter. Always be careful to read the label and follow instructions when using any chemicals in the yard. Trying to kill grass and weeds with black plastic won't necessarily provide a long-lasting effect.

If your grass is thin with a few weeds, you should just overseed. Use 4 pounds turf-type tall fescue per 1,000 square feet. Once your lawn is well established, it's not necessary to overseed each year.

For new lawns, the surface of the soil should be tilled 4 to 6 inches deep so the soil isn't compacted. Soil compaction will prevent air and water from getting to the turf's roots. This also is an ideal time to till in any nutrients a soil test has indicated are needed. You can also add organic material to improve the texture of the soil, help its water retention and aerate the soil. Organic matter helps aerate clay-heavy soils and helps maintain moisture in sandy soils.

Aeration should be done every two to three years, depending on how the soil compacts. Aeration, which is typically done with a piece of equipment that has spikes to pull out plugs of the soil, allows water, nutrients and seed to get into the soil instead of just lying on top of the soil.

FESCUE SEEDS

In addition to the many fescue choices, commercially marketed blends, such as Southern Belle, incorporate several fescues. Marketers claim these blends offer disease and drought-tolerant characteristics among the various seeds in the blend so there's something green and healthy thriving at all times.

Seeds with one of the two Virginia-Maryland labels have been tested and deemed suitable for local growing by research done at Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland.

WARM-SEASON GRASSES

Good quality Bermuda and Zoysia lawns must be started with cultivated plugs or sprigs that spread and cover completely in two to three years. You can find warm-season grasses in sod form for instant lawns. Only common Bermuda and common Zoysia can be seeded.

SOWING THE SEED

Half of the seed should be sown in one direction, the other half sown the opposite way. This avoids the look of rows having been planted. Then lightly rake and roll the seed bed. Most of the seed should stay in the upper half-inch of the soil. Seed by Oct. 15, so the seed has enough warm days and cool nights to germinate and establish itself by winter.

Mulching will keep the seed moist and prevent the soil from getting a crust on top of it. Typically straw is used. Straw, however, can contain weed seeds. The straw can be removed when the turf is 1 to 1+ inches high or left to decompose. Some say a new lawn can be established without straw; personal preference rules in this case.

WATERING

A newly seeded or sprigged lawn must be watered often to keep the seedbed moist but not saturated. You just don't want the seed or sprigs to dry out.

Lawns like lots of water, and how you water is important to healthy grass.

Deep waterings - an inch a week at one time - are much better than frequently shallow waterings. Deep waterings -letting the water slowly soak in to a deep depth - encourage the roots on all plants to grow deeper in search of water and nutrients; therefore, they sustain the top growth better during heat and humidity.

Shallow waterings cause roots to grow out near the surface, making them weak and unable to withstand heat and humidity. Put an empty tuna can under your sprinkler to gauge how much water you are applying to the lawn each time.

WEED CONTROL

Once the turf is growing, there's always the problem of weed control. Warm- and cool-season turfs are typically bothered by crabgrass, which can be controlled by a pre-emergence that's applied when the forsythia is in bloom, Feb. 15 to March 15. Winter weed control is done in the late fall, and summer weed control is done in the early spring.

You can learn a lot by picking up the warm- and cool-season maintenance calendars that are free from the Virginia Cooperative Extension office in your city or county. The handy calendars tell what should be done each month of the year. The offices also offer free publications on fertilization methods, watering, installing new lawns and weed control. All the information is based on research that Virginia Tech conducts, so techniques and recommendations are good for growing conditions in Hampton Roads. The recommendations are not based on products sold on the commercial market.

Once the warm- or cool-season lawn is established, it's important to provide the turf with good maintenance and nutrients so it grows thick and healthy with deep roots and good green vegetation. A thick turf will keep weeds from sprouting and thriving.

FERTILIZING

Three fertilizations in the fall - September, October and December - will promote good root growth in fescue. In September, use 10 pounds of 10-10-10 or 12 pounds. of 8-8-8 or the equivalent of other fertilizers per 1,000 square feet; in October, use 15 pounds of 10-10-10 or equivalent of other fertilizers per 1,000 square feet; and repeat the September formula in December.

Overseeding can be done in the fall, especially if there are bare spots where erosion could occur or the turf is thin. It's also a good time to put down lime if a soil test indicates the pH or acidity level needs to be higher. If the acidity needs to be lowered, sulfur is added. Typically, soils in Hampton Roads need lime.

Fescue fertilized properly in the fall really needs little or no fertilizer in the spring. If the fescue doesn't green up in the spring, the homeowner can apply a liquid chelated iron. The yellowing, however, can indicate a problem with the soil's pH, so a soil test should be done to solve what could be a long-term problem. The soil could have a condition that won't let the turf absorb the iron, or there may not be enough iron present in the soil.

Warm-season turf is fertilized in the spring. The first fertilization can be done in early March, with a second one in late May or early June. Bermuda can be fertilized lightly in August.

MOWING

Mowing also is an important aspect of maintenance for cool-and warm-season turfs. Most cool-season turfs should be mowed at a height of 2-3 inches while warm-season turfs like a shorter mowing height of + to 1 inch.

Mowing height is especially important for the fescue in the hot summer; mowing fescue too short will stress it. Always keep the blade on your mower sharp so the blade cuts the turf instead of whipping it. And follow the one-third rule when you mow: never remove more than one third of the leaf blades at any one mowing. This way you can use a mulching mower and let the grass stay in the yard to decompose and nourish the soil and turf. Clippings left on the lawn can reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizer by as much as one third.

THE PRICE OF GREEN

Homeowners can pick up their own sod and install it themselves and save; for example, a 5,000-square-foot lawn in a fescue would cost about $1,100 to $1,800 depending on where you purchase the sod. A 5,000-square-foot Rebel lawn installed for the homeowner would run $2,000 or more, depending on the installer.

Vamont Bermuda sod would run about $1,000, installed by a homeowner. A 2,000-square-foot lawn plugged by tearing apart Vamont Bermuda sod can be done for $35 to $50, depending on where you buy the sod.

Sod in various grasses also can be purchased in small strips at local garden centers if you want to redo or repair small areas.

If you're willing to wait for seed to germinate and develop, you can save big bucks. Fifty pounds of Kentucky 31 will run about $50; Southern Belle about $85; Rebel 3D, about $85.

LAWN GLOSSARY

Gardening has its own language. Here are some lawn-related terms you may like to know:

Thatch is a dry layer of organic matter at the soil surface in a lawn. More than 1/2-inch of thatch makes it harder for water to penetrate the roots and can harbor insects and diseases. In most cases, thatch results from excessive fertilizer and not from grass clippings, which are actually 80-90 percent water.

Cool-season grasses thrive in cool weather.

Warm-season grasses thrive in warm weather.

Aerate your lawn with a hollow-tine, core aerating machine. There are foot-operated sod corers on the market for small areas. An aerator removes small cores of soil - 1 to 3 inches in length from your lawn. The cores can be raked up, mowed with a non-bagging mower or left to ``melt'' back into the lawn after a few rainfalls. The process helps alleviate soil compaction and allows water and air to penetrate to root zones.

Organic fertilizers are nutrients that are derived solely from the remains or by-products of a once-living organism. Cottonseed meal, blood meal, bone meal, hoof and horn meal and all manures are organic fertilizers. Nutri-Green Compost is a soil conditioner and plant food supplement produced locally from wastewater solids by Hampton Roads Sanitation District; it's available in bags and bulk from local garden centers, mulch suppliers and hardware stores.

An herbicide is a chemical that kills plants. A nonresidual herbicide kills only at the time of application; a residual herbicide stays active in the soil for a few days to years. A nonselective herbicide kills any vegetation it touches; a selective herbicide kills weeds without harming surrounding plants.

Fertilizer numbers can be confusing: 5-10-10 or 10-6-4. The first number is the percentage of nitrogen (N); the second number phosphorus (P); and the third potassium (K). Nitrogen, which promotes green vegetation, is usually the first element in the soil to be depleted. Phosphorus promotes root and tuber growth and the production of flowers and seeds. Potassium is used by plants for growth.

Festuca, or fescue, is a genus of more than 400 species of mostly perennial grasses native to temperate areas.

The pH factor in soil is a numerical designation of acidity and alkalinity in soils and other biological systems. A pH of 7 indicates neutrality; higher values indicate alkalinity and lower values indicate acidity.

Chelates is a term that comes from the Greek word for claw. Chelates are chemical claws that help hold metal ions, such as iron, in solution so the plant can absorb them.