Suffocating in the Garden - Can my lawn be saved?

[Hadventurous]

I wonder if anyone might be able to help me resuscitate my lawn.

I have recently tried to revamp my lawn - after a shed and patio install saw it trampled to near death.

I have thus far:
> Mowed it short
> Scarified it

But ahead of sewing new grass seeds I wanted to aerate it. I cannot get my manual hollow tine into it... its like concrete and super hard. The mud type patches are where I've taken a shovel to it - to check how hard it was...

Can anyone help? Do I need to turn the whole thing over and start again?

I have included a photo below. Many thanks.

 

[Mike10]

I have thus far:
> Mowed it short
> Scarified it

But ahead of sewing new grass seeds I wanted to aerate it.

I don't know where you are, but here in the South East it is not really the best weather at the moment to be doing any of those things.
Your best course of action may be to just leave it for a while.
Looking at the pictures, I'd probably dig it over and turf it. You'll get a faster result that way.
(I know that isn't very helpful when you are keen to get it sorted).

Just my non-professional view.

This is my go to site for knowing when/how to do lawn work:
https://www.lawnsmith.co.uk/lawn-diary

 

[Hadventurous]

Thanks for that - I'm just keen for it to look good...

I might see what I can do as I don't think I can make it any worse and if I do have to re-lay / sew it its only small.

 

[scbk]

Watering it would be a good start.
Rain water/grey water would be fine

 

[StephenOak]

I would echo Mike10's comment about this being the wrong time to do some of these jobs.

A few years ago my lawn was rather compacted and became somewhat boggy after winter rain (apart from a dip that became visibly wet), so I wanted to aerate it. I tried in mid-September and just could nor get the hollow-tine aerator in, and the summer was no where nearly as warm and dry as this one. At the end of October we had a lot of rain and it went in okay. So I did the whole lawn which made a huge impression.

The following year I wanted to do one area again (most shaded so most moss), in order to work some more sand in. I thought it would be okay as it was October and the weather had been damp. It was not as hard as the previous year but I could not get the aerator in. I ended up putting a lawn sprinkler on half of it for 20-30 minutes while I did something else then using the aerator, then repeating this for the other half.