Hard to know where to start. You did good by seeding in Sept. Don't know what went wrong with the sprinkler but maybe you have the wrong one. I recommend an oscillator type for even coverage over a pretty big area. The newer turbine oscillators are better than the old mechanical ones. If you don't control of your watering then you are doomed to having a weed lawn. You absolutely cannot trust Mother Nature to help you water new seed. It MUST be watered 3x per day, for 10 minutes each, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Nature will never get that right. If you are going to spend the money on good seed, you should commit to the watering needed to make it sprout. KBG takes 3 weeks to sprout, to it is a commitment. Rather than spraying over and over for weeds, I would suggest you wait until fall to seed again. Yes you made a mistake that got in the way of your seeding. Next year do it right and you won't need this forum!!!

If you have a lot of thatch, then doing both power raking and core aeration can only be a good thing. We did both last fall, after not dethatching for several years, and the results this year were amazing. When you are overseeding, however, you need to verticut in two directions to get the best coverage. Sure, the seed will run into the holes left by core aeration, but you will get clumps coming up that look like hair plugs. Clusters of seeds run into the same hole and all come up in an overcrowded clump -- not the ideal situation. We had a landscaper convince us to let him do that one year and it was awful. Fescue is a clumping grass and it never did all grow together. Bluegrass might have yielded a better result because it spreads, but I would still ALWAYS verticut when seeding a lawn. If you verticut, you will get nice even crossed rows of grass coming up, as well as some "hair plugs", which won't be nearly as noticeable.

I know of no substitute (liquid, organic or otherwise) other than pilled uncoated urea that will work for the last application and give the desired benefits. 46-0-0 is the fertilizer of choice because it is very inexpensive (around $20 per bag- no specific brand and some stores bag their own) and is available at most garden centers, seed stores, or feed stores, but any fast release (uncoated) urea (e.g. 24-0-5) can be used--it will just take more product to get 1#/k and increase the cost. An over application of any synthetic can cause "burn" but usining a broadcast spreader rather than a drop spreader will reduce/eliiminate striping. Correctly calculating the total amount of product to apply 1#/k and lowering the the application rate of the spreader by closing the spreader opening down and using multiple passes until the total amount of product is spread over the lawn can eliminate any possiblity of burn. In addition because this last "winterizer" application is applied once the turf has either stopped or dramatically reduce top growth and temperatures are low, there is reduced chance of burn. Slow release (coated) synthetic fertilizers are no more likely to burn a lawn than some organic fertilizers (e.g/ Milorganie, Chickee-Doo-Doo, etc.) unless applied to damp/wet grass. Except for their cost on a pound for pound basis for the N, organics are a fine alternative to synthetics when temperatures are hign enough and moisture is available for the microarganisms to process the organic fertilizer into N, but as I said, no organic (temps will be too low) will substitute for the winterizer application. The benefits of early Spring greening, Spring spreading and turf health from a synthetic late "winterizer" N application on KBG are dramatic and well worth the effort. Synthetics are safe for new grass after the new grass's need for a third mowing. As an Aside, if I had $200 of seed, once Summer temps break (last week of August), I'd go ahead and cut the lawn down to 1-1 1/2" in stages over several days, verticut the lawn (basically an agressive thatching), rake, overseed, slit seed/veritucut again to bury the seed at 1/4", apply a starter fertilizer and lightly water 3 times a day until germination. Hope this has been useful.

Yes, I've ran out of time. I'm currently killing crab grass and yellow nutsedge. I plan to finish spraying those by the end of this week, the middle of next at the latest. Then I'm going to rent a dethatcher and run over the lawn to loosen up the dead clumps of of crab grass on September 18. I'll rake and clean everything up as well as I can. Then I plan to aerate on September 25 and over seed on the 26th or 27th. It's pushing me tight, but unless we have an unseasonably early winter, that should give my new grass plenty of time to take root and get started before going dormant. Next year I'll be using a Dimension based pre-emergent in about mid-April and again in mid- to late-July, so I shouldn't have near the problems with crab grass next year that I had this year. I'll spot treat the nutsedge with Tenacity as needed. I'm still bordered on two sides with crab grass filled empty lots, so I know that's going to be a struggle, but I have some ideas about that too. As long as I can get through this season, and get my seed in the ground before the end of the month, I feel pretty good. I'm going to take some pictures as I go along and will post them to show the different stages later. Thanks for the advice. - Byron