If you are going Organic, you really can not over do your applications. Lawn Restore is a good product, but you can also use Corn Meal or Cracked Corn, Soy Bean Meal and Milorganite (5-2-0 with 4% iron) to give you some diversity. Used Coffee Grounds can be used, if you can find a good source. In the fall, you can mulch mow leaves others throw away curb side and add lots of organic matter for free to your yard. It usually take 3-4 passes to make them disappear. Your neighbors will think you are crazy, but you can not deny the results. I applied 350lbs of organics / 1000 ft2 last year. Hoping to hit 500+ this year. Now for the clay, you can use a soil conditioner and wetting agent to loosen it up. This with the organics will open up the soil over a few years. Humic Acid, Dried Kelp and Black Strap Molasses can help energize the microbes in the soil and get things moving quickly in the spring. NC Agronomic agency soil tests are free and get you in the ball park. Although, once you dial the soil in, you may want to use a lab that gives you more details so you can tweak the other elements in your soil (Boron, Copper, Manganese, Zinc and Iron) Using lime (whether Calcitic or Dolomitic) is important and which one you use will help you with your pH and Calcium to Magnesium ratio (7:1 is what you are shooting for). Calcitic is usually 5x the price, but has 5x the Calcium. S http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/load/soil/msg0311011017714.html Lastly, NCState as a NTEP testing site for grasses. If you want the best results, using the best grass for this area is key. Typically the big box stores are not the best place. Online you can order exactly what you want. http://www.ntep.org/tf.htm Just read the results for the NC testing center and you can get an idea of which varieties you will want. In the end, you are probably not too far off. Since you enjoy it, adding a few more pieces to your schedule should improve your results.

Organic lawn care is not all that difficult to achieve - here in the PNW, organic gardening of any type is highly regarded and encouraged and lawn care is right up there with everything else. If you are planting a new lawn or sodding, preparation of the seed base is critical - a good, thick layer of quality soil to encourage deep root development and proper drainage is a must. If you are maintaining an existing lawn, my first suggestion is to invest in a mulching mower. Grasscycling or recycling of the finely minced grass clippings will reduce or even eliminate the need for additional fertilizing. Mow high and often and water infrequently but deeply. A well maintained and healthy lawn will outcompete weeds, but the best way to manage any that do appear is through manual removal or hand pulling. If your lawn has been previously maintained through chemical intervention (fertilizers and pesticides), be prepared to invest some patience in converting it to totally organic. Like any chemical addiction, the lawn will need to be weaned off and it may take a season or two before your lawn responds eagerly to the organic approach.

Okay. You need to forget the conversation with the sprinkler guy. He just wants to demonstrate all the cool features of his installation. Here's how to water. First you need to time how long it takes YOUR sprinkler system to deliver a full inch of water. Put some cat food or tuna cans out on the lawn and turn on the sprinkler. When all the cans are full, that's the time you want to memorize. That is the time you will water every time you water. When the temperatures are in the 90s, you should be watering no more than once per week. When temps fall into the 80s, you can back off to once every 2 weeks. When temps are in the 70s, back off to once every 3 weeks. Chances are your sprinkler system does not allow you to program it like that, so you'll have to go to manual. Also stop characterizing your soil as clay unless you have a brick factory in your neighborhood. When you have real clay, brick factories pop up. Otherwise what you have is sandy loam with too much magnesium in it. Magnesium causes soil to mimic clay in many ways. The red color is from iron, which you seem to have plenty of. You can do a quick test to show you don't have clay. Get a straight sided jar like an olive jar or whatever. Fill it half way with soil and measure the height with a ruler. Then fill it with water almost to the top and put in 3 drops of dish soap or shampoo. Put the lid on and shake it up real good. Then set the jar down. Two minutes later take a picture of the jar with the ruler next to it. Two hours later take another picture with the ruler. Then 2 days later take another picture. You're looking to get 100% of the inches of soil measured. If you had six inches of soil to start and after 2 minutes you have settling of 3 inches, then 50% of the soil is sand. After 2 hours if you have 2 inches more, then you have 33% loam (2 inches divided by the original 6 inches). The rest should be a cloudy brown water on top. What is most likely is that after 2 hours the water will not be that cloudy. If you can see through the jar then you virtually have no clay. If, after 2 days, the water on top is still cloudy/brown and not cleared up, then you have serious clay. Clay remains suspended in water for days.

Good points Paul. Outsourcing production makes sense. I haven't really tried to quantify it but my gut tells me to be skeptical about synthetic companies' organic products. My gut tends to be right a lot of the time so I'm starting out with other organic sources. My correspondence with Shel at Organic Lawns for America has been very positive. From speaking with another user I found it seems like they select what they consider the best products and repackage them and provide the convenience of mail order. I know to some this may seem lazy to some but the easier my lawn is to maintain the happier I am :) I got some soil conditioner which seems to be mostly calcium derived from limestone and an assortment of bacteria and fungi that appear to be soil inoculants as well as some other things that seem to help bring nutrients back into the soil. Going to do some more searching on the ingredients. I saw the abstract of one study on one of the bacteria and it increases the size of tomatoes. The Ca in it should help to. Curious to see how the other ingredients play in other plantings. No "fertilizer" in this treatment but with the grasscycling, liming and this treatment I'm hoping to see some better color in the lawn in a couple of weeks.