After overseeding, you want to wait as long as possible to mow. If you must, you must. Berfore overseeding, try to cut the lawn down to an inch and a half and bag the clipping--or get it down to what you can in what time you have to mow. The more you lay off your lawn after overseeding, the better it is for your seedlings. After a few weeks, they may be strong enough to take the trampling.

In the thin areas, there's barely any soil at all-- just compacted ground leftover after construction (the house is 2 years old). I could pound a spike in 6 inches (it's not concrete) but it's nothing I would consider soil or fertile. I definitely consider that soil. If it is not rock or rocks, then it is soil and can be reclaimed. My soil is pulverized limestone. It is white when all the organic material is stripped out, but it works great for us. Do this: 1. scatter some sort of organic fertilizer on the thin areas. Anything includes dog food, corn meal, wheat flour, soy bean meal, alfalfa pellets, coffee grounds, etc. Apply as heavily as you want but at least 10 pounds per 1,000 square feet. 2. Run a black soaker hose around in the thin areas. Turn the faucet on to a trickle and leave it running day and night for a week. This will give the soil a very slow soak. What you are doing with the slow soak is establishing an environment in the soil where the beneficial fungi like to grow. Once these things get started, they can grow several inches in a week. It is these fungi that give you the soil you want. You can't flood the area and hope it will work, because these fungi need air to live. So trickle-soak the area for a week and move the soaker hose to another spot for a week. Continue until you are happy with the areas you've soaked. Then repeat the process starting back at the beginning. When you have finished for the second time, repeat for a third time. At the end of the third time your soil in that area should be exactly like a sponge. Recall that a sponge is very soft when wet and very hard when dry. That's what you're after. When you walk on the recently watered ground, it should be very soft under foot. After a week it should be very hard, but it should absorb water quickly and soften when you water it again. And for all y'all weed b gone users, I don't know what to do with y'all. Please try spraying ONLY the foliage of your weeds with household vinegar (full strength). Spray on the hottest part of a hot sunny day. Be sure to protect the surrounding plants and grass from overspray. If, for some reason, that doesn't work, look for some 20% acidity vinegar. That stuff is the most dangerous thing in the organic arsenal but it makes very quick work of most weeds. My oxalis turns black in 20 minutes and is dried up and crispy in an hour. If you find the strong vinegar, please come back here and ask how to use it. It is definitely NOT for use around children, but the hazard is very temporary.

depends on what you spray a better option would have been to use a pre-emergant

it took me three years with 3 applications a years of roundup and spray specific to poisin ivy [i think it was Brush and PI Killer]... to kill PI ... and then i found out that the poisin in the ivy can remain active in the dead part for quite a period afterwards...which i cant recall now ... it seemed to me that the ivy could capsulize the kill ... it grows on an underground stem ... and killing the piece above will not kill the underground part.. and it will resprout from there.. repeatedly until you kill it all ... i think you need more research ... and the label is a good place to start ... good luck ken