Fertlizer for small patchy lawn....

[northeastlawn]

Sorry for this beginners question, but here goes....

I have a small (1,000 sf) established lawn in South Eastern Mass. by the coast that had a lot of thin/bare spots. There was a ton of clover that took over large patches last year. We dug out the clover. We moved a brick patio so dug up a ton of grass and needed to plant a lot of new seed.

In the fall we put down scotts fall fertilizer (sorry, no soil test, just did it)

Early spring applied lyme
Late spring we used a dethatching rake to get out the old thatch layer.
Used a hand core aerator and aerated it every 6-12"
Put down starter fertilizer and overseeded the lawn (but don't think that did a lot to fill join the bare spots.

The dethatching left a lot of bare spots, I patched them with top soil, scotts starter fertilizer, scotts sun and shade seed, and then covered with peatmoss. I kept the bare spots moist by watering the bare spots a few times a day. I now have a lawn with a lot of patches of new growing grass and mostly old established grass. But its slow going. Some spots took multiple attempts at patching, but finally baby grass is coming up.

My question is should I apply some more fertilizer to the lawn. I sent a soil test to Umass, but guessing from their website, won't expect to see my results for another 2-3 weeks. The scotts starter fertilizer with weed killer has mixed reviews, the original scotts starter fertlizer seems better but dont want to hurt the new grass . Scotts weed and feed seems to strong for the lawn.

It seems too late to apply crab grass preventer, I did get the grub-x applied 2 weeks ago.

I have the small patches very slowly growing in, and want to jump start it so weeds don't start growning in the bare spots, but don't want to kill the new grass.

I realized I made some mistakes at all this, but any suggestions regarding fertilizer and weed control?

[tlinden]

Good News: You can get Bay State Fertalizer in Quincy MA. Its super cheap and you can safely dump it on your lawn every week if you wanted to.

When did you put the seed down and have you kept the soil moist since?

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[northeastlawn]

I had one patch I did like 6 weeks ago, a few patches started coming in. I had another I did 3 weeks ago, grass started coming in 10 days later. I sprayed both patches about three times a day whenever I saw it was dry, at one point I noticed the edges were drying out more and not growing grass ( planted 6 weeks ago) and the newer patch was, so I reseeded it and it started sprouting in a week.

My random bare spots that seem more compacted have taken longer to get new grass to pop up. I still have some bare patches not growing, but have been giving them three weeks, if nothing happens in three weeks, I throw down more top soil and seed and try again, not sure if thats right or not...

My biggest mistake is not being ready to water the main lawn and realizing we were in a drought. I was watering the seed and the grass around the bare spots a few times a day, but didn't know about deep watering twice a week and think I may have caused some fungal issues in the lawn. I have rain gauge now and plan to do 0.5" twice a week if we don't get rain.

Its nice to see the other Massachusetts people on here to get some local advice.

[ken-n-nancy]

... There was a ton of clover that took over large patches last year. We dug out the clover.

First off, welcome to the site!

The one thing that I wanted to mention is that, in the future, if you get clover infestations in the lawn, rather than dig them out, it is helpful to leave the soil intact but to selectively (without killing the grass) kill off the clover.

The reason for this is that clover is one of the best nitrogen-fixing cover crops that there is -- what this means is that clover is *good* for your grass - it just doesn't provide that nice uniform look that most of us are after.

So, instead of digging out the clover, use a selective weed killer intended for clover. The standard recommendation for this is Ortho's Chickweed, Clover, and Oxalis Killer (CCO), which is known here as "level 2" in the triangle approach for addressing weeds. A couple properly-applied treatments with CCO, and the clover will be gone and the grass will be happier than ever.

I've found that usually where clover infests a section of lawn, it doesn't wipe out all of the grass, but just makes the grass hard to see interspersed amongst the clover leaves. If you still have even a couple blades of grass in every square inch, the grass will bounce back quickly once the clover has been eliminated with the CCO -- indeed, the dead clover will provide "nitrogen fertilizer" for the grass which will help that portion of the lawn thrive.

[northeastlawn]

Awesome info thanks, learning a lot.

Just got my soil report back from Umass. PH was 5.9 and "above optimal" for P, Ca, Mg, and "optimal" for K. Ill post the results to the proper page. Here is the link....

http://aroundtheyard.com/soil/mass-lawn ... 17094.html

My issues probably comes from May being so dry and soil compaction. Getting excited for August, I probably can only overseed, doubt I can convince my SO to nuke the yard just to level it all off. All this work hasn't given her the confidence we could pull off a new lawn from seed.

Thanks again for the great info, getting hooked on this stuff.