I hate tall fescue

Nah, I don't really hate it. I just don't want it in our yard at all. I'm not even sure if it is tall fescue, but it appears to be. It has course, thick bladed leaves that aren't soft and smooth like Kentucky bluegrass and it just doesn't look very good, at least not in a mix with Kentucky bluegrass. To me it  looks very similar to crabgrass.

Here's the deal. The new grass in the front is starting to grow quite well in some places and is looking much better. However, there is a contrast in colors between the old and new parts of the lawn and it's really bugging me and making me wonder what to do about it. Here's a shot that shows it:

Contrasting colors. Note the darker green of the new grass
toward  the front vs. the brighter green old grass behind it.

 I was afraid of this happening. However, I think I might know the main cause of this: tall fescue. The old grass is "infested" with tall fescue. This grass has always bugged me. It's a lighter color than the other grass and grows must faster. This is part of the reason I went so crazy last year tearing up the lawn - about all that was left in some of the areas was tall fescue and I wanted it gone. Here's a closer shot of the edge of the new and old grass showing the tall fescue:

Note the thicker blades are brighter green color of the tall fescue.

If it weren't there, I don't think the color contrast would be nearly as evident, if evident at all.

Something must be done about this, of course. I can't stand by and let the tall fescue ruin my dream. So today, I decided to pull some of the more obvious ones, like this patch:

An ugly tall fescue orchardgrass patch.

One thing led to another and soon enough I was at it for about 4 hours pulling as much up as I could. It looks so much better once removed, even with a vacant spot in its wake. I much prefer those spots to the tall fescue.

The problem is that in those 4 hours, I barely made a dent and there are some areas that have so much that I might as well just kill it all with roundup and reseed. I definitely don't want to be doing that, at least not a large area like last year, so I'm thinking that if I keep with it all throughout the season, little by little I might be able to pull it all up by hand. And perhaps the thicker areas I can just kill and reseed this fall, if the areas is not too big. I'm certainly not lacking in motivation to go this route.

However, I was doing some searching on the problem and it appears that there might be a product that selectively kills tall fescue without harming Kentucky bluegrass! This got me very excited. The product is called Certainty Turf Herbicide or Riverdale Corsair and there are probably others. The active ingredient appears to be Sulfosulfuron and I found a publication of a study using a it on tall fescue and some other grasses. This sounds very promising and sounds much better to me than countless hours of manual pulling. Now I just need to find where I can purchase it.

Oh, and one more little side note. There's also tall fescue throughout the backyard as well. That's another reason I believe it's in fact tall fescue because it is also a shade tolerant grass and would need to be to thrive back there.

This is how much I pulled in the end:

To the "compost" pile!

A good 50-75 lbs worth, I'd say.