its possible that the soil in the area close to your road might have a high concentration of salt in it?

First, If it's pale green/yellow, get a bag of pulverized (not pellitized) lime and water it in. I'd start with ~20 lbs per 1000 sq ft as a happy medium so you don't over do it.

Without any soil test I'll bet you've got a low pH. Don't pay attention to the "never put lime down without a soil test.

Second, your lawn needs food. Use something with phosphorous to get your roots to grow rather than all top growth. Either use Scott's Winterizer (which only has 3% phosphorus or just get a bag of 10-10-10 or 12-12-12.

Organic stuff won't have time to kick in before we get the really hard freeze/frost that stops the growth. A light frost in the morning by itself won't stop the growth. I'm in S. Maine and the growth usually stop around the 1st week of November.

thanks! i added fast-acting lime last night. i also put down some winterizer I had but realized after I put it down that it had weed control in it! ack! I should have read the label more carefully, but it was an older bag and all folded over. It poured today (I know, I should have checked the forecast before doing all that anyway), so I'm hoping that the weed control part won't take and that it will just act as a fertilizer. is this the case?

Sooooo, how long should I give it before I think about applying more fertilizer? I'm sort of panicked about it because I'm running out of time! In the meantime, my lawn looks butchered...

I reseeded my lawn with KGB at least 5 times when I first moved in to my house. It was a new construction and I basically had no lawn for the first year or so. KGB germinates slow, it grows slow and its painful to establish at first. I had couple spots that I just reseeded about two weeks back and are coming up nicely now but are still very small.

I wouldnt worry about size of the seedlings as they take forever to grow but all this time they do develop roots which is really what matters right now. As main lawn nut pointed out 10-10-10 or 12-12-12 would be good but if you already put down winterizer that should work. If I remember correctly it has higher K just for that reason, to develop roots. I dont know what form of weed control it contained or if thats going to do any damage, you'll have to wait and see.

Anyway my point is that slow growth with KGB should be totaly expected. Yellowing on the other hand cant be good but its hard to tell why it would yellow. Possibly weed control doing some harm there.

>"If I remember correctly it has higher K just for that reason, to develop roots."

K stands for potassium or potash. Neither have anything to do with root growth.

Easy way to remember NPK is up, down and all around. The K is for all around health to the plant.

And >"Don't pay attention to the "never put lime down without a soil test." is about the poorest advice I have ever seen. Could the yellow grass be caused from an iron deficiency? A soil test would say.

newly, nothing you can do about the weed killer component at this point. There's a difference between "winterizer" and "winter guard" as you've discovered. Keep the lawn moist as with the cool temps we've had, KBG is going to try your patience so try and get all the germination you can get. The rain my have washed away some of the 2,4D but it's hard to say how much of the germination will be inhibited.

Once we get the first really hard frost, give your entire lawn a feeding of 10-10-10. The roots will take up the Phosphorus and in spring you'll have a healthy lawn ready for action.

You can get a soil test in the spring to nail down your lime requirements but I'll bet $$$$$$$$$$$$$ that it's low.

Gary, you live in CHI town. I live in New England, not far from the OP. We get substantial annual rainfall and have acidic soil. Generalities are a downfall of this site. My advice is spot on so I'll respectfully disagree with you. The OP's descriptions are a sure sign of low pH with no time to be waiting two+ weeks for soil test results. Once you look at a lot of grass and compare it to soil results you learn....

You can have all the iron in the world in your soil and a low pH will stop the plant (grass) from using it.

In New England if you get your pH right, you can almost ignore all the other soil parameters outright. The one exception is current production packaging with "phos-free" means we are actually at risk of having low P levels to the unknowing. See previously mentioned annual rainfall to understand why we get so much leaching.....