Grass and Bamboo: HELP!!! HAS MY LAWN BEEN MURDERED???, 1 by LnKann

LnKann wrote:
Thanks for your reply; I am in the process of researching all the options you've listed.

My husband and I spent a lot of time preparing the soil. We dragged the surface using a piece of chain link fence, and then removed all visible rocks. After that, we dragged the soil again. We repeated this process a few times until the soil surface was smooth, relatively rock-free and somewhat flat. We then let the soil sit for a few days to settle down again (we didn't want the seeds burying too far down into the soil) but not so long as that the soil needed retiling. When we planted seeds, we chose a blend that had a small ratio of annual seeds (are property slopes and we wanted to anchor the loosened soil quickly) but was largely made up of perennial grasses. I can't remember which blend we ended up with, but I do know that we chose the one with the lowest percentage of weed seeds and inert matter. I'm looking into which varieties we settled on so as to research their dormancy times.
I will pull a plug of grass to see if the roots penetrated. This may be a dumb question, but how do I determine if roots are dead or alive?