Lawn Renovation

[pkrainert]

Hello All!

I am going to reseed my backyard roughly 780sq ft. Right now the grass is very brittle and brown since it has not been watered in over a month. I would like to avoid removing all the existing grass but I am afraid that it might come back to life since it is mostly weeds. Even though everything is brown should I apply some type of weed killer prior to seeding?

My soil is very compacted and contains a lot of clay, I have the lawn scalped and I was going to spray the weed killer then about a week or so later rent an aerator and do some heavy aeration and then overseed.

Would this work or do I need to remove all of the grass? I planted my front lawn 2 years ago and I started from scratch I ripped out the existing weed lawn (foreclosure) and tilled seeded and raked and it worked out great. It is very labor intensive to do that though I Was hoping to get away with leaving the lawn scalped.

I already purchased the seed I wish to use its a buffalo grass that requires little in the way of watering, it says it also does well in clay type soils.