Good grass growing conditions

After several days of close to 100 degree weather, we've cooled all the way down to the mid-60s today. I'm sure the grass is happy about that.

On Saturday I mowed the the front yard again, this time mowing all of the newly planted areas at about 1.5".

There has been a breakout of crabgrass along the road.

The crabgrass is the lighter green.

My guess is that aerating and overseeding turned up seeds from last year and provided places for them to germinate. Also keeping the grass mowed at 2" probably helps as well. I'm bummed about this as there is quite a lot so it's competing with the new grass (which granted there doesn't seem to be much for some reason) and it doesn't look good, but I'll do my best to pull it before it's able to seed.

I have also noticed a number of weeds throughout the yard, but this is to be expected when growing grass. I've been carefully pulling some of the larger ones.

I thought that the grass I planted last year was looking patchy and I was concerned that it had a disease or something. Recently, my neighbor showed me a patch grass in his lawn that had died and he said his lawn treatment company said it was due to a fungus (I'd like to know how they could tell that because I couldn't see anything other than the dead grass). He also said that the neighbor across the street used to have an immaculate lawn and one year it completely died due to some disease. Yikes! That wouldn't be very cool. I guess I need to start learning more about grass diseases so I can be proactive (thankfully, Purdue turfgrass program has a number of publications on turf diseases). When I compare before and after shots, I don't see a whole lot of change, so at least it doesn't appear to be getting worse. Perhaps I didn't water enough during the heat/drought this summer, or is/was it a disease of some sort? I don't have the slightest clue.

Yesterday

Before (August 16)

I'm still waiting to mow the back yard... that is if there is any grass left after the squirrels are done doing their thing.